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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
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http://www.archive.org/details/roumaniandiary1903kenn 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 



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LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 






1 


Frontispiece 


THE NOONDAY MEAL 



A ROUMANIAN 
DIARY 



1915, 1916, 1917 



BY 



LADY KENNARD 



ILLUSTRATED 



LONDON 




WILLIAM HEINEMANN 






c' 



NOV 28 13(7 TC 



London : William Heinemann, 1917. 



®CL A tot 3 063 Y^ 



PREFACE 

This little book contains a short summary 
of my own impressions of Roumania and the 
Roumanian people as chronicled for private 
interest during the several months I spent in 
the country previous to its entry into the war, 
supplemented by regular letters subsequently 
received from friends who remained to work 
there when circumstances had obliged me to 
return to England. To these latter I have 
added nothing of my own imaginings and 
omitted little of the original text. Only the 
form and mode of presentation are mine, but 
I found it easier, for the sake of making of 
the whole a consecutive narrative, to hold to 
the original diary form. 

The idea of publication was only born in 
me when I realised how very little is known 
by the general public of all that one of our 
Allies has suffered of tragedy during the war. 
I submit the narrative most tentatively, with 
the hope that it is not altogether deficient. 

I am indebted to Comte Etienne de 



vi PREFACE 

Beaumont and Major Arion for the photos 
which appear in these pages. Were it not for 
their kindness I should have indeed been at 
a loss, for topical photos of any kind emanating 
from Roumania are practically unobtainable. 

Dorothy Kennard. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Facing page 
THE NOONDAY MEAL . . . Frontispiece • 

THE REAPING . . . . . .12' 

ONE OF THE NEW STEAM PLOUGHS . . . 13" 

A TYPICAL WATER WELL ..... 28 ,/ 

SIFTING THE GRAIN . . . . .29 

AT HER LOOM ...... 60^ 

A WELL-TO-DO FARM-HOUSE . . . . 6l 

H.M. QUEEN MARIE AFTER THE OPENING OF 

PARLIAMENT ...... 96" 

ARRIVAL AT JASSY ...... 97 

SHIFFANOYA, DEPOT FOR MOTOR AMBULANCES . 126' 

A VILLAGE CHAPEL . . . . . . 12 7 ^ 

A GROUP OF RED CROSS WORKERS . . . 160 ^ 

EVEN ENGINES CARRIED HUMAN FREIGHT DURING 

THE RETREAT ...... l6l ^ 

RUSSO-ROUMANIAN ARMY SERVICE CORPS DURING 

THE RETREAT ...... 176 ' 

FIELD KITCHEN AT WORK IN A LOCAL STATION 

DURING THE RUSSIAN RETREAT . . . 177 / 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 



CHAPTER I 

September 191 5. — I do not know quite what 
it was that brought us to Roumania. The 
war had been going on for over a year — per- 
haps that was the reason. There is, in every 
human being, a wild wish to get away, even 
if only for a time, from the place where he 
happens to be. And there was nothing, now, 
to hold us in England. 

The journey was interesting. It promised, 
at the outset, almost insuperable difficulties. 
We left London with a party, all bound for 
Bucarest, all armed with every form of laisser 
passer and Customs facility. The Channel 
was netted from Folkestone to Boulogne, even 
in those early days, and we were escorted by 
an airship. It sounds well to say " escorted," 
but I have a suspicion that its presence was 
accidental. Boulogne to Paris took seven 



2 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

hours, and at Paris we overnighted. Having 
missed the connection with Marseilles next 
day, owing to a change of time-table, we 
travelled in a troop train, sitting up the whole 
night through in superlative discomfort. At 
Marseilles we were warned that our boat was 
a marked ship, as she carried ammunition and 
a French general and his staff bound for 
Salonika ; also sixty British mechanics for the 
Dardanelles. However, we decided to risk it, 
and the whole party got on board : eight 
people, twenty-four heavy trunks and twenty- 
six bits of hand-luggage. All went well as far 
as Malta. 

Six hours out of that port, however, we had 
an excitement : a cargo steamer that we had 
been watching with the interest which any 
rival craft invariably provokes at sea, suddenly 
seemed, at the distance of barely two miles, 
to be listing heavily, abnormally. We signalled 
to her repeatedly, obtaining no response what- 
ever, and, from what we could see through 
our glasses, the boat appeared deserted, as did 
the little lifeboat bobbing up and down along- 
side of her. Suddenly she heeled right over, 
blew up and disappeared, and our captain 
frantically ordered, " Full steam ahead." It 
was presumed that the submarine responsible 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 3 

was lying in wait for us also, and we spent an 
anxious night on deck. Arrived at Athens we 
were again ordered off the ship, and only the 
fact that we were to be convoyed to Salonika 
obtained for us official permission to proceed. 
In Salonika we found no room available. 
The town was crowded out and had turned 
into a Tower of Babel. The British Red 
Cross Commissioner procured us a shake-down 
where we slept, three in a room. Here we were 
informed of the Bulgarian mobilisation and of 
the impossibility of proceeding, as had been our 
original intention, via Sofia. We were assured, 
however, that, could we but get to Nish, we 
would find there some means of going through 
to Bucarest vid the Danube. Remained the 
problem of " getting to Nish," a difficult one, 
owing to the fact that an important bridge on 
the Salonika-Nish railway line had broken down 
the day before. Thanks, curiously enough in 
the existing political crisis, to the activities of 
the Bulgarian consul, we got off next morning 
on the first and, as was subsequently proved, 
the last train through : a most uncomfortable 
transit. We sat up for twenty-four hours in 
a Greek day-carriage, recently fumigated and 
smelling of the process. There was not one 
drop of water on the whole length and breadth 



4 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

of the train ; in fact, from Salonika to the 
Danube we washed in Vichy water and Lano- 
line grease. Arrived at Nish we found a 
curious state of affairs : a Serbian village 
become through the misfortunes of war the 
country's capital. The Government officials 
worked in improvised shanties, the diplomats 
lived in mud huts. Our own Minister had 
been lucky enough to obtain as Legation a 
four-roomed hovel, and all the service in the 
local club was done by Austrian prisoners. In 
one of these I recognised a former waiter at 
the Carlton in London. 

We had time here to lay in a small stock 
of food. The supply was limited, as the local 
population was preparing to evacuate the town 
before the expected German invasion, and was 
as chary of parting with stock as we were loth 
to take it. I even left behind me, as a parting 
gift, a few small boxes of English matches, 
worth their weight in gold. Our unpreten- 
tious, old-fashioned little train steamed out of 
Nish station at four o'clock in the afternoon. 
We were huddled together in two second- 
class carriages with wooden seats, literally the 
best that the poor little country could afford. 
Incidentally it is worthy of note that our 
large, expensive party, travelling in a country 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 5 

where the population was destitute and the 
Government in as sorry a plight, paid not one 
single penny from frontier to frontier, " because 
we were Allies." Thus the grand geste of a 
little nation ! A miserably uncomfortable 
night was survived, after a fashion. Again 
there was not a drop of water on the train, 
and I will not attempt to describe the picture 
which dawn revealed of our unwashed and tired 
faces. Progress was of the slowest, for we 
were constantly shunted to make way for 
troop trains. And such troop trains ! Long 
lines of open wagons, where tired men leant 
against one another in the manner that leaden 
soldiers fall when a small boy piles them into 
his toy railway. Broken men these, who were 
still bandaged with dirty rags from field- 
dressing stations, and who clasped worn stumps 
of rifles as if to find in them some hope of 
future retribution upon the enemy who had 
brought them so low. We passed at one 
moment within a stone's-throw of the Bul- 
garian frontier, and found massed units of 
these wearied troops resting by the roadside, 
waiting — for war was very near. Almost were 
we stopped at Nicoline and our train requisi- 
tioned ; thanks, however, to the persuasive 
methods of the Serbian Government officials 



6 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

versus the military, we were allowed to 
proceed. 

Twenty-four hours after leaving Nish we 
reached the Danube, where, after infinite 
parley, the captain of the only steamboat 
running (a Roumanian line) offered to take us 
from Prahova to Kalafat. The latter, a small 
Roumanian port, was reached at 10 p.m. 
Here we found darkness and no possible hotel ; 
further, no train until the morning. We were 
literally stranded, for our captain declined to 
help us, and propelled the party, plus the 
voluminous luggage, gently but firmly land- 
wards. He was obliged, he said, to make the 
return journey that night. A Heaven-sent 
Russian plutocrat who had been our fellow- 
traveller from Salonika took pity on our plight, 
which was also his, and chartered a special to 
take us all to Bucarest. After having moved 
our luggage into it with our own hands, we 
finally started off at midnight, having pre- 
viously drunk to the Allied cause in bottles 
and bottles of beer, seated in a jovial row on 
the little Kalafat pier, whilst our dangling 
toes touched the water and spread ripples in 
the moonlight. There was a hot and heavy 
silence over the world, and waterfowl screamed 
a dirge for the dead who were to travel along 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 7 

that river towards the sea. For when we 
arrived in Bucarest next morning, it was to 
hear at the station that Bulgaria had declared 
war on Serbia overnight. 

So here we find ourselves to-day, successful 
travellers, a little weary, perhaps, and singu- 
larly appreciative of food and lodging, but 
proud of the fact that it was an English party 
that caught the last train and the last boat 
through. 

October 191 5. — Our house is comfortable. 
It stands behind a wall and boasts a little 
garden ; the street outside is cobbled. On the 
right hand I can see the gables of a splendid 
marble palace with a pillared portico, whilst 
swelling to the left the thatch which roofs a 
workman's cottage. These are symbolical of 
Bucarest fifty years ago and of Bucarest to-day. 
It is late autumn, and a chill is in the air, but 
I have seen some wonderful sunsets. 

This is a happy little town. Everybody 
smiles, and hardly any one has anything to do. 
One long shopping street, the Calea Victoriei, 
winds from the Chaussee towards the river, 
and passes the Palace and the two big hotels ; 
here cheerful, informal shops flaunt super- 
fluities at prohibitive prices. The Roumanians 
are all rather rich (I am speaking of the ones 



8 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

who live in cities), and love to dawdle here at 
noon, drinking " Zwicka " at the cafes, and 
lounging, men and women alike, against the 
plate-glass windows, which reflect both their 
own profiles and the silhouettes of passers-by. 
Street cabs roll smoothly here on rubber tyres, 
and the coachmen, resplendent in blue velvet 
and scarlet sashes, have a regal appearance. 
At first I hesitated to hail them, for they 
seemed too grand for hire, but soon discovered 
that self-respecting Roumanians own motors 
or nothing at all. 

Life is childishly simple. We wake at 
eleven, and stroll towards the Chaussee at 
twelve. Bucarest owns several parks ; two 
are pretty and one alone is fashionable. This 
latter is the Chaussee, a sort of grandchild 
of the Champs Elysees, but it leads out into 
the open country instead of towards a Bois. 
Over a bridge where the trees end and fields 
begin lies the new aviation ground. Here 
lead all roads where motors travel, and here, 
towards evening, end all Roumanian " perfect 
days." For the whole population of the town 
rides, drives and strolls there in the sunset. 
Embryo airmen loop the loop and cast weird 
shadows on hangars which gleam against the 
black earth that turns to green in spring-time. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 9 

It is still warm and we play a lot of tennis. 
Whispers come of war, all friendly, for the 
general feeling is pro-Ally. But their tone is 
passive and, as a nation, Roumania is still 
quite neutral. Nevertheless one hears mur- 
murs of " Our Roumania," " Honour," 
" Fatherland," " Ces sales Bulgares," " Those 
unspeakable Boches," and seeds have been 
sown that will bear their fruit. 

We are threatened with an influx of Allied 
missions evacuating Sofia. Belgrade has fallen, 
and the Germans are streaming into Serbia 
along the road we travelled. 

In Bucarest, of course, we see the Germans 
in hundreds. Certain shops have to be boy- 
cotted, as they are German owned, and it is 
gratifying to note that these are shunned alike 
by the Roumanians and the Allies. At the 
races on Sundays one sees the enemy diplomats 
wandering near the railings, fat and pompous, 
and wearing overcoats of marvellous cut. 
Whenever a new village falls in Serbia, Capsa's 
Restaurant (the Ritz of Bucarest) resounds to 
German toasts and German voices. At a 
music-hall, however, to which I went one 
evening, the Roumanian audience sang and 
whistled " Tipperary " and hooted German 
phrases spoken on the stage. 



io A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Society is returning to town, for the rains 
are expected, and we have begun to play 
bridge and to pay calls. In a vague way 
conversation hovers about the war. But it 
occupies itself chiefly with minor social prob- 
lems which crop up as a result of the whirling 
of the maelstrom. The following is an 
instance — 

A Dutch subject, A, marries a German 
woman, B. A becomes, long before the out- 
break of war, a naturalised Englishman in 
South Africa. When war is declared he is 
decoyed to Germany, caught and sentenced 
to death as a spy. His wife, left stranded in 
Roumania, is not allowed to live there without 
a passport, nor is she, without one, allowed to 
leave the country. The Dutch Government 
refuses to give her one as she is, by marriage, 
a British subject. Our own refuses as she is 
an enemy alien. The German Government 
also refuses because she is the wife of a con- 
demned spy. Curious ! 

November 191 5. — The seeds are sprouting. 
Bucarest is stirred by anti-Governmental agita- 
tions for war. One was held to-day, for 
which we hired a window, just as if it had 
been the Lord Mayor's Show. Troops patrolled 
the streets, some of which had even been 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY n 

brought from Ploesti. The windows of the 
German and Austrian Legations have recently 
been broken on various occasions, and the 
gates were triply guarded. Various politicians 
made incendiary speeches in the public square 
below us, urging the crowd to importune the 
King for war. They proclaimed that Rou- 
mania's prolonged neutrality spelt German 
slavery for ever. The crowd of some five 
thousand peasants, students and citizens actually 
charged the front rank of troops, massed to the 
number of five hundred men, before the 
Palace gate. Three or four citizens and 
several soldiers were wounded, several revolvers 
snapped, and one man was bayonetted in the 
stomach and killed. Otherwise nothing hap- 
pened. But straws show which way the wind 
blows, though it may take a gale to stir a nation 
that lives under thatch. 

Seven thousand refugees have arrived in 
Roumania from Serbia, and Bucarest is busy 
organising relief committees which will pro- 
vide hostels for them on the Danube. Tor- 
rential rain has begun to fall, and one shudders 
when one pictures their plight. Restive tidings 
come from Greece, equivocal and unsatisfac- 
tory. It is whispered that Bagdad has fallen, 
and rumour is rife, whilst German propaganda 



12 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

agents here have become extraordinarily active 
lately, and spies abound. Altogether we are 
restless and long for definite news of the outer 
world. 

To-day the King opened the Chamber. I 
believe that there was quite a scene, and 
fisticuffs came into play when some would-be 
patriots shouted, " Down with Hungary ! " 
The King was well received. 

I am going to spend a month in the country. 
Bucarest is too small to interest one for a 
long time on end, and one grows very nervous 
under the tension of waiting for something to 
happen which cannot possibly come to pass 
for at least a year. The peasants here require 
investigation. They are children : happy, well 
clothed and well fed. 

About a week ago I rode out very early 
towards the aviation ground. Two Roumanian 
officers were before me, trying a new aero- 
plane. Just as I arrived, the monoplane 
hummed away into the distance and the 
sunrise. I stopped to pass the time with the 
remaining subaltern, who had once been a 
dancing partner. 

" What a gorgeous day ! " I opened — ob- 
viously. 

The little lieutenant smiled a somewhat 




THE REAPING 




ONE OF THE NEW STEAM PLOUGHS 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 13 

doubtful assent, then shivered and offered me 
a cigarette. 

" The ground is cold and very muddy," he 
answered, with a furtive glance at the dimmed 
splendour of his new top-boots. " Six months 
of military service have not yet accustomed me 
to the material discomfort of early morning." 

We waited, silently. On every side stretched 
virgin soil, rich, black and fruitful. Perhaps 
it was the fact that the very earth had not 
been stirred for centuries that gave to all 
things on all sides their calm, intense repose. 
Close at hand a peasant's hut belched forth 
charcoal fumes, and a woman whose feet were 
bare, but who flaunted on her head a scarlet 
kerchief, tended to children and chickens 
indiscriminately amidst a heap of refuse. 
Near by a shepherd, owner of them all, 
watched his flocks and looked at nothing. We 
strolled towards him. 

" Do talk to him," I said. " I may be able 
to understand a little." 

" Well, my man," said my friend obediently, 
" how's the world treating you ? Crops good ? " 

" I am a shepherd, Excellency." 

" Does it pay you well — bring you much 
money ? " 

" As well as may be, Excellency ; one lives." 



14 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

" Ask him if he's happy," I said. 

" Do you like living so ? " was the form my 
question took. 

" Yes, Excellency. The lambs this year are 
fat and strong." 

" Impossible people," said the officer ; " they 
think of nothing but their sheep." 

" Well, you don't give them much else to 
think about," I replied. 

There was a humming overhead. The 
lieutenant, slightly exasperated, pointed to 
the descending monoplane, for the shepherd 
had not raised his eyes. 

" Do you know what that is ? " he asked. 

" No, Excellency," — without interest. 

" That is a machine which flies — it is called 
an aeroplane. You must have seen them 
before — you live here." 

" We sleep after noon," replied the man 
ruminatively. Then : " Yes, I have seen a 
machine. It stopped on the road where 
Mitru lives, and left in the road a pool of 
liquid which was not water. Mitru's pig 
drank there and it died." 

It was hard not to smile. " Shall I give 
him a ride in the aeroplane ? " asked my friend 
quizzically. 

" Won't he die of fright ? " 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 15 

" Not he. You don't know these people. 
Come, my man, I will take you in this machine 
and show you what it is to fly. Would you 
like it ? " 

" If it please your Excellency. The sheep 
are feeding and will not stray." 

After a few words of introduction and 
explanation to the other officer, who had 
landed a few hundred yards behind us, the 
shepherd was hoisted into his passenger seat 
and the aeroplane soared away. 

The woman just raised her scarlet-crowned 
head and then resumed her sweeping. A few 
sheep scampered away terrified. I lit another 
cigarette. 

" The English are funny people," murmured 
my companion ; " they do not like experi- 
ments themselves, yet they approve of them 
for others." 

" What do you call our war ? " I asked. 

" A certainty," was the reply. 

The trip was short ; already the monoplane 
was circling round the little cabin. It swooped 
and came to earth where it had risen. The 
shepherd climbed down silently and stood, 
waiting. 

" Well," said the soldiers tentatively, " did 
you like it, or were you frightened ? " 



1 6 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

" I saw my sheep smaller," was the answer. 
Then : " Have you a present for Zwicka ? " 

" I told you so," said my friend ; " they are 
impossible people." 

" But yet they have a lot of common sense," 
I amended, as I rode away. 

If that is the Roumanian peasant as he is 
within a stone's-throw of his capital, I want 
to know him in the country ! 



CHAPTER II 

December 191 5. — I have gone back to the 
land with a vengeance ! The soil pursues one 
into one's bedroom, so tenaciously does it 
cling and clog the footwear. My British 
brogues are ill-adapted to Roumanian country 
roads, and gather weight at every step. For 
a country bordering on the East, where 
" scenery " means blaze and light, the land- 
scapes here offer peculiar contradictions. 
Although transparent skies and sunshine are 
in proper keeping, the colour scheme is dark 
almost to greyness through the neutral tints 
of earth and thatch and trees. It is winter 
and all branches are bare. I made a curious 
discovery to-day : a nail had worked loose 
inside my shoe, and I needed a stone. Per- 
haps if I had been willing to walk a mile and 
sear^ at every step, I might have found one, 
but in retrospect this seems unlikely. This 
country, which teems with ungrown corn and 

oozes petrol, does not run to stones. Corn 
c 17 



1 8 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

means bread in plenty and petrol stands for 
motor traffic, but one thing more is essential 
in modern life, and that is material wherewith 
to build. There is none, and therefore you 
will find few houses on a Roumanian horizon. 
Village architecture runs to mud and thatch, 
and when proprietors are comparatively 
wealthy they invest in a coat of whitewash. 
Such buildings occasionally gleam amongst 
distant trees ; the meaner ones are marked by 
wisps of smoke. Often the former are painted 
in flaunting colours and designs such as those 
which peasant women embroider on their 
Sunday clothes. 

What strikes one most is the greatness of 
earth qua earth and the unimportance of people 
whose dead bodies go to make it. I have 
lived in desert countries where space is infinite 
and everything except humanity so immense 
that it touches the sublime. But the painter 
was delicate in touch, and his pictures are 
mirage in water-colour ; here we are shown 
panorama, rich and solid, done in oils. When 
one has known and loved the furthest East, 
one meets with daily disappointment in these 
Balkan states. Sometimes, on moonlit nights, 
when the gypsies play for dancing, one can 
trace in the cadence of their cracked violins 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 19 

echoes of the flutes which Persian shepherds 
play ; but this is seldom. More often, alas ! 
memory recalls the Blue Hungarian Band. 
There is little soul in the music, but plenty 
of inspiring rhythm. I went to a " Chindia," 
or country dance, where all the villagers came, 
dressed in their best, and danced themselves 
to madness, whilst my own feet grew most 
unruly and aspired to fantastic evolutions 
inadequately realised. 

They are a handsome race — swarthy some- 
times, but with clean brown skins to veil the 
vivid gypsy blood. Often they are very fair, 
and the women recall tales of Circassian slaves. 
Men and women alike are supple and well 
formed ; further, the native dress enhances 
the inherent grace. White is the predominat- 
ing tone, for the loose shirts, open at the throat, 
are made of cotton, sunbleached and starched 
by drying in the wind. The women wear 
embroidered blouses of butter muslin caught 
together at the neck with narrow cord. This 
is tucked into a double apron which falls in 
two straight panels in front and behind. 
Sometimes these are of woven wool in rich 
dark colours, more seldom of silk, and these 
boast glints of gold or silver thread. It is in 
colour schemes that the Roumanian peasant 



20 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

soul gives expression to ideals, and the whole 
scale of human personality is betrayed in the 
contrasting tones of apron-sash and kerchief. 
Roumanian femininity has never admitted that 
it had a waist ; the man, par contre, is flagrant 
in boasting of his own. His shirt is cut and 
pleated into semblance of a kilt, and the 
coloured waist-band which marks his middle 
has learnt to rival the lines of Persian minia- 
tures. Tight-fitting under-drawers of cotton, 
which tidy ankles and feet away into woollen 
socks, embroidered in black and white, complete 
his costume ; woe, therefore, to the rarity 
who suffers from ill-shapen legs ! I never 
saw one. All are broad-shouldered, flat- 
backed and tall. Grown old, they have a 
patriarchal dignity all their own wherein 
combined the kindly resignation of the slav 
and the fatalism of the East. Young and old 
alike have happy faces, and have not learnt to 
smile the smile which knows not laughter. 

I do not think that a single peasant Under- 
stands that the greatest war in history is being 
fought almost within sound of the guns. 
They know, vaguely, that their enemies, the 
Bulgars, who cultivate, by force of tradition 
and superior knowledge, most of the vegetables 
grown for Roumanian towns, have been re- 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 21 

called across their border to fight. And for 
this fact they are as vaguely grateful, for a 
goodly proportion will never return, and a 
new industry glimmers as a possibly profitable 
opening for such enlightened villagers as have 
comprehended that the earth can foster other 
growths than corn. But, for the rest, why, 
even we ourselves have almost forgotten the 
war ! Small wonder to it. The rains have 
washed the world, and winds from Russia 
stripped the foliage from all trees ; neverthe- 
less we are basking in a St. Martin's summer, 
and feel most wonderfully warm. We motor 
all day, long excursions in unkempt-looking 
cars, the hum of whose engines alone betrays 
their worth. Big properties often lie thirty 
or forty miles apart, but country-house stand- 
ards are kept, and that with kinship to those 
in England. In Wallachia we are invited for 
week-ends of tennis, motoring and companion- 
ship ; Moldavia offers gun and rifle sport of 
every kind. 

Little sight-seeing is possible. We spent the 
whole of one drowsy day in the silence of a 
nunnery. A square courtyard, where the 
paving-stones trapped sunlight, flanked the 
ennobled cruet-stand which was the church. 
The place is famed for age and sanctity. 



22 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Faded paintings decorated the whitewashed 
exterior of the building, and a dreamy vague- 
ness of incense and tired gold glimpsed through 
the archway of the door. There were several 
valuable ikons hidden in corners, and a modern 
one from Odessa leaned to catch the only ray 
of sunlight which reached the altar. This 
had been raised some few months before in 
honour of the Queen, who came once on a 
visit and taught the peasants to love her. 

We made just one other excursion with an 
object on the day that saw us drive thirteen 
miles in a country cart to inspect steam 
ploughs lately arrived from England. Our 
way led straight across the fields, where motors 
cannot travel. I remember the owner of the 
property, who said to me : " These are the 
first machines to be introduced here ; next 
year there will be dozens, and the crop will 
be a phenomenal one." 

Two years' accumulation of unsold corn 
already taxes the accommodating power of 
the country. Where is the object, therefore, 
of a record yield ? 

I have failed, somehow, most singularly, in 
the realisation of my purpose in coming and 
living outside the radius of the city, namely, 
the one of studying the Roumanian peasant 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 23 

at home. A thorough knowledge of the lan- 
guage is essential, and, even towards their 
fellow-countrymen, they are most curiously 
unapproachable. One can only marvel at the 
infinity that divides their mentality from that 
of their brothers in the towns. Even the 
look in their eyes changes after a few weeks 
in the city, and decidedly for the worse in 
every case. One must conclude that they 
are not ready yet for confinement in bricks 
and mortar. Besides, in such an exaggeratedly 
agricultural land, the earth holds primitive 
sway and guards most jealously children who 
are complete dependents. Despite the fact 
that they are rich, according to the standards 
of labourers in the West, beyond all dreams 
of acquisition and earning, they have remained 
most primitive, and I must honestly confess 
that at times their sense of cleanliness is com- 
pletely dormant. Houses, humans and animals 
alike are indistinguishable, at a few yards' 
distance, against the immense brown back- 
ground of the covering soil. 

January 191 6.— The month brought snow 
and found us back in Bucarest. Social life 
has begun — not the fastly furious exaggeration 
which novels had taught us to believe holds 
sway. All the ladies are busy rolling bandages 



24 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

and working at hospital supply depots. This 
not for the profit of the Allied troops, but 
for themselves, as a preparation for their own 
entry on the Allied side. A marked change 
has come over the atmosphere, and their 
hands have begun to grope towards us where 
only their hearts formerly inclined. A few 
there are amongst them whose sympathy is 
frankly hostile, and who hobnob at Capsa's 
with the Boches. But society treats them 
scurvily and shuns their environs. At dances, 
theatre parties — such as they are — and dinners 
we meet hosts of young people, amongst them 
many officers, and these chafe openly against 
the equivocal attitude of their Government. 
The girls burn with patriotism for France, a 
country which they have been brought up to 
reverence. Dowagers see in the future, when 
Roumania joins, advancement for their sons, 
whilst old men envisage in their conversation 
dreams which their fathers taught them to 
cherish of a " Greater Roumania." Mean- 
while the men of thirty-five or thereabouts 
are seldom seen. Some are away on their 
estates, preparing, it is said, to negotiate a 
great political deal in corn, others are per- 
fecting the school of aviation recently in- 
augurated in Roumania according to a system 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 25 

learnt in France. Others, again, are lost in 
Government buildings. We meet these latter 
occasionally, and they invariably find means 
to whisper or imply : " C'est pour bientot, 
notre entree." Preparation everywhere, allies 
in all but name, hesitating, nevertheless, to 
take the final plunge into a whirlpool of 
horror which can prove but questionably 
profitable. 

They work during the week, but on Sundays 
make holiday, and the afternoon sees them 
stream out in one gay, unending procession to 
the racecourse at the top of the Chaussee. 
Nothing happens there, for there is no racing 
except during the spring and autumn, but 
everybody sees everybody else, and those 
persons whom everybody is with. 

Hats still arrive from Paris, no one quite 
knows how, but presumably they take a three 
weeks' journey round the Baltic Sea. It is 
possibly more probable that they originate 
in Vienna. And the clothes are wonderful, 
and even more wonderfully expensive. The 
country must be made of money. I have 
never imagined that a place could exist on 
this earth where even the poor were so ob- 
viously rich. Not a middle-class family but 
can afford themselves a weekly hired cab or 



26 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

motor at a price of over a sovereign an hour 
in which to spend the afternoon ! 

We are tantalised by the importance, in- 
adequacy and divergence of the news items 
which filter through devious routes from every 
corner of the globe. German newspapers are 
patronised for interest's sake, and we are 
choked with propaganda literature issued daily 
by the Wolff Bureau. The Bulgarian Press 
Agency publications provide entertainment 
for our evenings, but we all suffer from wist- 
ful longing for the Daily Mail on our breakfast 
table. Posts arrive from home with complete 
regularity, though the dates are prehistoric. 
The Roumanian papers, however, are fairly 
well informed. Their columns make bewilder- 
ing study, for the Allies communiques therein 
rub shoulders with enemy news and offer 
kaleidoscopic information. 

The Germans in our midst are somewhat 
officiously en Evidence these days, and one 
cannot deny that their effusive methods of 
propaganda bear fruit. Sometimes we come 
face to face with enemy diplomats, intimates 
often of pre-war days, in some restaurant 
cloak-room. British, French, Germans and 
Austrians alike have learnt to don a curious 
facial expression born of these encounters, 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 27 

which is a mixture of well-bred indifference 
and a frankly vulgar sneer. One avoids such 
meetings whenever possible, but this is a tiny 
town, and there are but some half-dozen 
streets where one can walk in comfort. 

At regular intervals some politician in the 
Chamber makes an inflammatory speech urging 
participation in the war. Then rumour runs 
wild, and people begin to whisper over the 
morning aperitif, the Allied ministers are 
cheered, and influential pro-Germans avoid 
public appearances in the company of their 
German friends. But nothing is going to 
happen here for a long time, nor is it of advan- 
tage to our cause that such unknown waters 
should be prematurely stirred. On every side 
there echoes the catch-word : " Nous sommes 
un si petit pays — qui sait ce qui peut nous 
arriver ? " 

No one at home can comprehend the com- 
plete isolation of this country. Straight 
through Austria and Germany lies the only 
reliable communication with the Paris they 
love and honour here as a religion. Roumania 
is not the originator of hypocritical tactics 
which profess friendship for an enemy so as 
to keep in touch with that enemy's environ- 
ment. Social climbers will understand my 



28 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

point. All that Roumanians have to offer of 
private funds and sympathy they have already 
given. Not a woman one meets but has a 
filleul somewhere in the trenches, hardly a 
man who has no investments in some form of 
war loan. As a race they may be held to be 
somewhat flippant, but we have their indi- 
vidual friendship in return for what we have 
already given them. Should we offer them 
more, reserving threats against a possible 
rejection, they will probably accept it, because 
they trust us sufficiently to think that they 
will not be asked too high a price. 

February 191 6. — When the snow fell really 
deep and the surface of it froze, we packed an 
outfit for winter sport and entrained for the 
mountains. Sinaia is the obvious resort on 
these occasions, in the same fashion as it offers 
for the summer a respite from the dog days. 
The hotels stand open in winter, as does the 
casino in ordinary years. But this time the 
war had closed those treacherous doors. 

The hotels are primitive for a country 
which inclines instinctively towards display of 
luxury. One cannot even obtain a comfort- 
able bath. But Roumania borders enough 
upon Eastern countries to catch rays from 
their winter sunshine, and it is no hardship to 





*:■; 



A TYPICAL WATER WELL 




; il 



SIFTING THE GRAIN 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 29 

spend long days out of doors. Bobsleighs and 
skis multiplied with marvellous rapidity, and 
those amongst us who ignored the possibilities 
of both were invited to go " footing " for 
miles over the snow. Blue-misted valleys and 
ravines where mountain water flowed made 
switchbacks for pointed hills of fir trees, and 
one recalled obscure parts of Switzerland, im- 
mortalised in guide-books. Villas sprouted 
everywhere, built in painted wood on the 
Swiss cottage system, and one was hard put 
to it to remember that one was in the 
Balkans. 

Little of import occurred here, but I 
myself, who am a maniac for scenery, carried 
away a mind-picture of the view from Santa 
Anna mountain, where we enjoyed a moonlit 
dinner eaten off rugs spread on the snow, and 
danced to music made by villagers in a wooden 
hut built to shelter travellers overnighted on 
the peak. 

As far as the war was concerned we remained 
passive spectators only, and that at an immense 
distance. But from Ploesti came the news 
that the year was to be a record one for petrol 
output. The Roumanians themselves are only 
just beginning to understand how rich they 
can so easily become ; how should outsiders 



30 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

guess it ? It appears that on the Austrian 
frontiers live stock has been surreptitiously 
sold in large quantities to the enemy. But 
one can hardly call this treachery ; the prices 
offered were stupendous and the traffickers 
were peasants. Still, the tale is not a pretty 
one in view of the very stringent military 
laws recently passed, and I am glad to say that 
the offenders were duly punished. 

March 1 91 6. — We find, on our return to 
Bucarest, that a British Bureau has been estab- 
lished for the purchase of large quantities of 
corn. It is hoped that such a procedure, 
which will bring vast sums of money into the 
country, will discourage illegal frontier traffic 
such as has been discovered lately. The town 
is in an uproar of excitement, for the crops 
have lain unsold ever since the war started, 
and many land-owners have suffered financially. 
Now they are all clamouring for a share in 
the new market, for the quantity required 
cannot even begin to affect the overwhelming 
supply. There is, of course, an absolute im- 
possibility of transporting the purchased grain 
to England for lack of routes and rolling stock, 
but it has been planned to store the acquisi- 
tion all over the land in granaries built for 
and sealed by the British Government. All 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 31 

this is very feasible, but one dreads what may 
happen should Roumania come into the war 
and fail to stem a German invasion. 

The direct result of the installation of the 
Corn Bureau has been a wave of popular 
enthusiasm for the British. Money talks in 
all languages, and the British have suddenly 
become almost popular, as the French have 
always been. If only Russia could invent a 
beau geste of this nature, this country would 
be completely won. Her great Northern 
neighbour still inspires this small dependent 
with a vague mistrust. Realising the situa- 
tion, one cannot cavil at the existence of such 
a sentiment. Were the lines of communica- 
tion through Austria once closed, Roumania 
would find herself relying upon one railway 
line to Petrograd for even the most insig- 
nificant requirements of modern life, not to 
mention the whole paraphernalia essential to 
modern warfare. Beyond a few villages where 
they have learnt a primitive cotton industry, 
a few leather factories and some alcohol plants, 
the population produces absolutely nothing 
except the corn and the oil from out its own 
mother earth. Meanwhile every necessity 
reaches quickly and in perfect condition all 
the gaps where it is required through existing 



32 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

channels, and Roumania wants for nothing, 
nor will she unless she abandon her neutrality. 

This corn deal will be a nasty blow for the 
Germans, who have been trying to purchase 
the stocks for months. It is hardly to be 
expected that they will take it lying down, 
and I fancy that the Government here will 
be faced with some unpleasant ultimatums in 
the near future. One can only hope that a 
loophole will be found by which this country 
can establish for itself a still firmer neutrality. 
Even those patriots who are most anxious for 
immediate participation in the war are obliged 
to admit that nothing is as yet prepared. It 
is rumoured that the next important political 
step here will be a general mobilisation. Only 
when that is well over will there be a possi- 
bility of looking round and seeing definitely 
what is going to be needed. The army is 
growing rather restless, and waking from a 
sleep of infancy to watch interestedly the 
games of older children. It is the best way 
to learn, but it takes a long time, and I am 
not sure that there will be time enough. 

April 191 6. — Spring has come, quite sud- 
denly, and we have routed out dusty cup- 
boards for tennis racquets. There is a scarcity 
of balls, which spoils our form. None are 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 33 

allowed to come through Russia, and the 
inferior quality of the few Austrian ones 
received can be directly traced to a German 
shortage of rubber. 

Racing has begun, and we drive out every 
Sunday, dressed in our best, to bet a little, 
stroll a little and drink a little tea. 

The whole earth seems to have cracked in 
the same manner as do the buds on trees, 
showing an undercovering of delicate green, 
which is the sprouting corn. The peasants 
who work there are mostly women, for the 
army has in very truth been mobilised, and 
all the men are away digging trenches on the 
Austrian and Bulgarian frontiers. Roumania 
has entered the war in all but the actual 
declaration, and now it only remains to be 
seen whether an open outbreak of hostilities 
can be sufficiently delayed for the best to be 
made of her very considerable assets of enthu- 
siasm and men. Several little incidents have 
occurred lately to prove how near we are to 
conflagration. 

When the annual bazaar was held for the 
benefit of the Sisters of Charity, the wife of 
the Austrian minister received quantities of 
anonymous letters warning her that, if she 
held her annual stall, it would be boycotted 



34 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

and that she herself would probably be in- 
sulted. The happening was not in the best 
of taste and one deplores it openly, but finds 
therein considerable satisfaction nevertheless. 
And the German representative was threatened 
with a thrashing at the club. Fewer German 
propaganda leaflets have fluttered lately, and 
the well-known Roumanian pro-Germans are 
keeping very quiet and are seldom visible. 

As a country, however, and in the eyes of 
International Law, Roumania is still neutral, 
and Germany is letting sleeping dogs lie for 
some reason of her own. It is only a question 
of months now as to when the crash will 
come, and we are beginning, for the first 
time, to envisage it seriously. I have been 
making tentative inquiries as to the Red Cross 
supplies existing, and find them most woefully 
inadequate for the kind of need there will be. 
The hospitals are undeniably primitive. A 
few private individuals are preparing Red 
Cross equipments and beds on their estates, 
but such amateur efforts can only provide 
accommodation for a very limited number of 
the wounded who arrive in hundreds from a 
modern battle-field. And they could prove 
no more than comfortable convalescent homes 
at best, from the nature of their distance from 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 35 

the capital and the lack of railway com- 
munications. 

The existing political situation makes any 
form of preparation extraordinarily difficult, 
and Russia is chary of giving real transport 
help and facilities until the moment arrives 
for Roumania to be her open ally. The 
whole makes for a vicious circle singularly 
difficult to evade. For Germany will be 
obliged to act promptly and brutally on the 
day that open hostility is declared, yet no real 
help can be given here until such a declara- 
tion is made. We indulge, however, in 
numerous surreptitious activities and hope 
for the best, although disquieting thoughts 
are born when one pictures the future and all 
that it may hold for us of tragedy. 



CHAPTER III 

May 1916. — The National Fete, the 23rd 
of May, marked the middle of the month, and 
a great review was held. Troops arrived in 
train-loads from all over the country for days 
beforehand and were billeted on the towns- 
folk. Despite the fact that all except the 
actual Guards regiments turned out in sober 
field equipment, which is grey-green in colour 
over here, I have never seen a spectacle that 
offered such a wonderful example of kinema- 
colour. Perhaps this was due to the fact that 
everything was so perfect and so small. The 
field-pieces almost glittered for the polishing 
which had been their lot, and all the ponies 
had been carefully selected to match the 
colour schemes of their various detachments. 
The ceremony took place in the morning on 
the length of the Chaussee. Tents and 
stands had been built in the night, and were 
thronged with spectators come, not to judge 
of worth, but to admire their relations. 
Herein they found full justification, for it 

36 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 37 

must be admitted, both as an example of 
individual physical perfection and as a military 
force, the Roumanian army calls for respect. 
The standard is so high that it has become a 
danger, for one is inclined to forget the one 
crushing and unavoidable limitation of indi- 
vidual numbers. All the military science of 
the world cannot make more men than the 
population of a country is competent to offer, 
and what are tens of thousands sent to battle- 
fields where one has learnt to count the 
casualties in millions ? King, Queen and 
Crown Prince rode at the head of their regi- 
ments and looked their best in uniform. 
The whole was a very lovely spectacle, but 
did not stand for warfare as it has developed 
during the last two years. When the beautiful 
little motor ambulances rolled past, gleaming 
with new coats of paint where red crosses 
caught the sunlight, the crowd was heard to 
murmur : " How wonderfully equipped is our 
army ; even the details are perfect." But we 
others who had seen the wounded arrive from 
Mons watched silently and went home very 
thoughtful. 

There are three classes of hospitals in 
Bucarest : about a dozen permanent and well 
organised, attended by first-class surgeons. 



38 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

These have existed contemporaneously with 
the army and were instituted on French mili- 
tary lines, so as to be prepared for war, should 
war, by any chance, break out. In peace time 
they serve as sanatoriums and civilian hospitals, 
and we all go there when we are ill. Then 
there are about ten auxiliary hospitals, which 
have sprung into being quite lately and which 
are in the process of organisation. They are 
awaiting stores and supplies from home, and 
will probably be in working order by the 
time that war comes to us, provided, of 
course, that their stock arrives satisfactorily. 
What they lack are efficient doctors and 
nurses. Of the former there are a few, mostly 
students, who have done superficial training in 
Germany or in France. There are no nurses 
at all. Even those who work in the estab- 
lished institutions are Roumanian amateurs 
now, because the women who originally ran 
them were Germans, who have lately been 
recalled to their own country. The Catholic 
nuns are really the most efficient amongst 
them, but they are limited in number and 
barely suffice for their own small charity con- 
cern, which has existed for years and which is 
financed by their Order in France. The 
third class consists of all the supplementary 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 39 

adjuncts that are springing up daily all over 
the land, on private estates, in schools, and in 
private houses belonging to rich people in 
Bucarest. These are purely temporary con- 
cerns, and do not pretend to be anything else. 
In many cases only the covering sheds exist, 
so as to give them an excuse for a registration 
number. Beds and stores have, naturally, been 
ordered, but the people who are at the head 
of them are private individuals, and conse- 
quently ignorant of the first principles of 
medical requirements. Even the greatest 
optimists amongst us cannot count on them 
as anything but primitive dressing-stations for 
the future. I think that everybody has at 
last realised the very urgent need for prepara- 
tion and reorganisation which has held fire so 
long, but it is by no means easy to know 
where to begin. One cannot embark upon 
satisfactory activities when one is as lacking 
as we are in every form of material. Germany 
and Austria, who supply Roumania with all 
that she requires for industrial purposes, can 
obviously not be approached for these, her 
greater needs. And the Russian routes remain 
defiantly closed to all except the very irregular 
transmission of mails. A few small parcels 
arrive by letter post, but Roumania needs 



4 o A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

many shiploads of everything, from chloroform 
to aeroplanes, before she can even begin to 
consider their distribution. 

The tragedy of the whole thing is that, 
whereas the country as a whole has com- 
prehended the universal shortage, few in- 
dividuals can be found to embark upon 
energetic measures for finding a solution to 
the problem of supplies. One hears talk of 
battles and sees them on the brink of par- 
ticipation, knowing the while that little short 
of disaster can come of it under the present 
circumstances. The historic British motto of 
" It will all be all right in the end " is in- 
spiring only for countries strong enough to 
survive preliminary blows and to deliver the 
hardest hits in the last round. We have the 
uncomfortable feeling born of living very near 
a volcano which is going to erupt. 

Personally I cannot understand why the 
Germans are standing what they are getting 
out here. They seem to have accepted the 
facts of the corn deal, which is now an accom- 
plished transaction. The corn is stored in 
British granaries and the money has changed 
hands. Consequently many people who have 
been comparatively poor for two years have 
suddenly become wealthy again, and find the 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 41 

condition pleasant. They rejoice quite openly- 
over what they describe as Roumania's " entry," 
and can leave the Germans no vestige of 
doubt as to their antagonism. 

These outbursts of enthusiasm are occasion- 
ally tempered by the fact that we get little 
Allied news of the outside world. The facts 
of the German repulse at Verdun leaked through 
to us, however, and helped to destroy attempts 
to maintain the fiction of Roumanian neutrality. 
One small section of society remains as openly 
" Boche " as it has always been. The business 
men who go to make it dabble in political 
intrigue and occasionally worry us by spreading 
rumours that the Government is to be evicted, 
but they are not very convincing and their 
propaganda is too obvious. There can be 
hardly any doubt now as to the direction in 
which we are rapidly moving. 

A large party of British Red Cross nurses 
and doctors from Bulgaria recently passed 
through Bucarest. They had been released 
from a six months' captivity which had been 
their lot ever since the Bulgarian invasion of 
Serbia. They told almost incredible tales of 
the horrors of that campaign, and the look in 
their eyes gave evidence which disproved the 
possibility of exaggeration. Here they received 



42 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

a most enthusiastic welcome and were pressed 
to remain. But they only spent three days, 
and then we saw them steam northwards 
along the single railway line to Petrograd 
and home. I must confess that I saw light- 
ning pictures of ourselves doing likewise and 
under similar circumstances in a few months' 
time. 

Our days are spent in drawing up lists and 
posting them to England of things which we 
are likely to require. They are so vast that 
one becomes discouraged. But a beginning 
must be made. Whether the things will ever 
reach us remains to be seen, but anything is 
better than inactivity, which is what we all 
suffer from nowadays. This eternal waiting 
for something to happen is bad for the nerves, 
and yet it is inevitable. The longer we can 
be left in peace " to wait," the better it will 
be for us all. 

June 1 91 6. — The heat is almost overpower- 
ing, but Bucarest is full. Many are the reasons 
invented as excuses for staying on in this sun- 
trap of heat-cracked plaster and dusty green ; 
nevertheless we all know quite well why we 
are still here. War is spoken of openly, and 
the only thing that is inexplicable is the 
wherefore of this tarrying. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 43 

The Russian frontier has been closed for 
the last three weeks even to English mails. 
It is hinted that prodigious movements of 
troops are responsible, and that is satisfactory, 
for it has been officially recognised that 
Roumania is unable to take her first step alone. 
We chafe impotently against the consequent 
suspension of all news which is not telegraphic 
from the outer world. So very probable is it 
that our English papers could give us more 
reliable information about the local situation 
than we who are on the spot can obtain our- 
selves. One would suppose that, in a small 
town like this, any important happening such 
as an official pronouncement or a definite 
development in the critical situation would 
emanate immediately from obvious and reliable 
sources and become publicly known, but this 
is by no means the case. Here we are told 
only the scantiest of details, and the little we 
hear is only rumour of the wildest kind. 
During the last month it has even been whis- 
pered that Roumania is going to " go German " 
at the last minute, and that all her preparation 
is for the supreme betrayal. But we can 
afford to laugh at such a monstrous accusation, 
for she is definitely committed in a hundred 
ways, and the evidence of our own eyes is 



44 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

the most direct contradiction of such a 
possibility as that we could desire. 

The Government still talk of neutrality and 
affect a purely local preoccupation with home 
politics. These latter, however, are purely 
the result of opposing German and Allied 
interests, and the pro-Germans are in an 
individual minority, hopeless, despite the for- 
midable support which money brings them. 

I hear it openly discussed that the first 
Roumanian move will be a gigantic forward 
movement into Transylvania. From this 
country's point of view, the world-war will 
obtain its participation from one ambition 
alone, and that the conquest of territories 
which are hers by blood ties and heritage. 

Oh dear ! This waiting is nervous work. I 
feel that I must do something active or take 
refuge in a sleeping draught. We are now 
informed that all is ready, but that nothing 
can happen until the Russian troops arrive. 
Certainly there is no sign of them yet. Mean- 
while every day sees new outbursts of military 
activity in the town and in the suburbs. 
Troops march through in hundreds, and I 
cannot believe that the Germans are ignorant 
of all that is toward. On the other hand, if 
they know that war is spoken of as a question 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 45 

of weeks, perhaps of days, why on earth don't 
they assert themselves, instead of pretending 
to believe implicitly the reiterated official pro- 
testations of complete neutrality ? One can 
only conclude that they are lying in wait for 
us in some unpleasant fashion, and that is not 
a comforting thought. Only one thing is 
certain, and that is the break which is coming. 
This state of things cannot possibly last much 
longer. The fuse has been lighted. 

July 1 91 6. — A month has passed and we are 
still here, still neutral, still on tenterhooks. 
There is no news from Russia, but troops are 
said to have crossed the Danube. 

All the ladies have been requested to report 
themselves at the Headquarters of the Rou- 
manian Red Cross. We Englishwomen can go 
and work where we like, and I have offered 
myself to one of the big military hospitals. 
I was asked whether I had ever done any 
nursing, and was obliged to give a negative 
reply. But I was told that it " did not 
matter," my hands would be useful. I work 
there feverishly every day trying to accumulate 
as much knowledge and nursing information 
as is possible. Nurses are even more com- 
pletely non-existent than I had realised. 
There is not a woman in the place who knows 



46 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

the first principles of hospital training such 
as we have in England, and I feel just as com- 
petent as are any of the others to use lavish 
quantities of disinfectants and to do exactly 
as I am told. The doctor who is to be my 
immediate chief is a very clever man ; he 
knows how to teach me my job, and now it is 
only a question of time. 

The days fly past. Each evening the con- 
flagration seems inevitable within the next 
twenty-four hours, every morning sees us sunk 
in apathy and summer stupor. And the heat 
is indescribable. We avoid meeting people ; 
where's the use ? They know now more than 
we do ourselves, and talking about the situation 
only aggravates the tension. 



CHAPTER IV 

August 1 91 6. — War is really coming. Our 
street to-day looks quite martial ; there is a 
remount office at the end of it, and streams 
of men go in and out there all the time. We 
have been warned that all the telegraph wires 
to Austria-Hungary will be cut to-morrow. 
Of this the enemy envoys, apparently, know 
nothing. There is to be a Crown Council 
to-morrow night to deal with final private 
affairs, though it is hoped that the Germans 
will regard it as the terrified result of a 
haughty ultimatum which they sent Roumania 
this week. The attack is planned for to- 
morrow. Things are getting exciting, but 
one still hesitates to credit that the moment 
has come at last. 

It is said that our first taste of warfare will 
be an aerial bombardment. I have ordered 
water to be kept in all the bath-tubs from 
to-day forward, and am having a tap connec- 
tion provided between the garden hose and 
the pantry. All the blankets are piled in the 

47 



48 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

front hall. Perhaps in this manner we can 
ensure a slight protection against fire. 

The Roumanians are not over-confident. 
In fact, they don't expect to begin by winning. 
They say there will be reverses, losses near 
the Danube towns ; this because the Russians 
have not yet arrived and may come rather late. 
But the General Staff holds to the bait of 
Transylvania, and means to gamble high. 

We sent out for the newspapers to-day and 
were told that publication was prohibited, 
presumably for fear of possible leakage about 
the attack, which aims at being a surprise one. 
Many of the houses where important person- 
ages live are watched. Now we just sit and 
wait for news from the first Roumanian front. 
The words seem strange as I write them. It 
sounds queer somehow, and horrible when I 
picture further and imagine what lies ahead 
of us. No one at home can understand the 
weak fear that undermines the morale of those 
who live in " Little Countries." Our soldiers 
fight with cannon, these men mostly with their 
hands, and they have only two each. And 
there are no great factories behind them crash- 
ing out ammunition ; they are dependent upon 
train supplies over an independable route. 
Oh yes ! it will soon be brought home to us, 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 49 

this war, which has only meant words to us 
women in England, where the Zeppelin raids 
were the only material taste we got. 

The prolonged waiting is hard. There is 
little harder. It's like watching an accident 
avoided — or happen. I personally have never 
been frightened, and don't know at all how I 
should behave in a systematic bombardment. 
Our two little red English fire-squirts, bought 
a long while previously in a German shop, 
look singularly small and pathetic, and I 
cannot help wishing that they were bigger ! 
I have packed the silver away, also the china. 
I have tried to busy myself all day with absurd 
superfluities, and all the time I find myself 
listening. . . . 

Oh, I do hope that I'll have the luck to live 
through this war ; it would be such bad luck 
not to ! But out here there is no reason why 
any one should. Three German aeroplanes or 
one Zeppelin could play hell with this little 
town of trees and plaster. And Bulgaria is 
only one hour's flight away ! However, to sit 
and wait here for a year, anticipating war, 
and then to be extinguished promptly by a 
Bulgarian bomb, would be an injustice un- 
worthy of the Almighty. It is really only 
an impersonal desire to be in at the finish, 



50 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

not the wish to live, that prompts these 
words. 

Later. — Hurrah ! the die is cast. All the 
telephone wires have been cut, the enemy 
envoys are to be packed off this evening, and 
mobilisation for active service begins at mid- 
night. We have already been declared " under 
martial law." War will be declared in Vienna, 
a little bit late, by the Roumanian minister. 
I met the German minister here walking 
towards his Legation this morning, and wanted 
to make a face at him. That is the way one 
feels. 

Later. — Well ! the passes are half taken, 
wounded are coming in, also prisoners. It is 
really war, and I am really in it ! ! ! 

Bucarest is quite calm. Orders have come 
round to extinguish all the lights in view of 
the Zeppelin raids which have actually begun. 
I had only one little green light burning in 
my house last night when the first one was 
signalled, and the police came and told me to 
put it out. I was so snubbed that I did not 
attempt a candle, and sat through the raid in 
the dark. 

All the church bells rang wildly when the 
signal came through, and the guns were 
infernal, popping like mad. I counted twelve 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 51 

searchlights and tried to believe in the actuality 
of the happening, but honestly, if I had not 
hurt myself by bumping into a tin trunk in 
the dark, I should feel to-day as if I had 
dreamt the whole thing. One thing, how- 
ever, struck me forcibly, and will remain as a 
humorous recollection until I die : in this 
quiet town, lying peacefully under a starlit 
heaven with no sound of traffic to spoil the 
silence, the sound that deafened us was not 
the shooting, but the dogs ! ! Thousands of 
them barked, every age and size of yap imagin- 
able, and I picture them all with surprised, 
stiff noses, furious and impotent. They caught 
a nest of spies signalling to the Zepp, and we 
are expecting another raid to-night, as the 
first was probably only a trial trip. I hope 
they won't come daily, though there is nothing 
to prevent it — our aerial defences are decidedly 
primitive. These visitations upset one's sleep. 
Only five bombs were dropped last night, and 
I feel somehow as if they were reserving 
themselves for something really nasty. 

There was no butter to-day for breakfast, 
but we were very cheerful about it, because 
we heard that a big tunnel has been taken 
intact on the Predeal line, which ensures the 
army communications. It had been feared 



52 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

that the Austrians would destroy it. I sup- 
pose that they had no time ; still, one hopes 
that it will not prove to have been a ruse that 
they did not do so. These soldiers are new to 
warfare and the enemy is not. It would be 
disastrous if local successes went to their 
heads. 

September 191 6. — All is still safe and quiet; 
so far we have not even had food difficulties. 
Zepps crossed the Danube last night and were 
signalled here, but there was too much wind 
for them, presumably, for they never arrived. 

I have fallen into regular hospital routine, 
and have been given charge of one of the 
pavilions into which our own institution is 
divided. Needless to say that I feel singularly 
incompetent, but am bound to acknowledge 
that it had become a matter of necessity to 
put some reliable person at the head of each. 
Most of the women who work there are 
young girls who have no notion of responsi- 
bility or method. They do not know enough 
to take the most ordinary of sanitary pre- 
cautions. I go at breakfast time every day 
till late at night, and only get home for lunch, 
and supper in the middle of the night. 

Everybody is in the highest spirits ; the 
Roumanian advance is almost brilliant, and 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 53 

one can hardly credit the communiques that 
come in, they are so splendid. Nevertheless 
I can't help feeling that this nation has not 
the faintest conception of the horrid things 
that might happen to it should things, by any 
chance, begin to go wrong ; and the start has 
really been too one-sided. 

Later. — It has been a wild twenty-four 
hours ! To-day, at three o'clock on a sunny 
afternoon, I drove back to my hospital. In 
the open market-place, which is the half-way 
house, I noticed all the people looking up and 
gesticulating, and then for half an hour I was 
really in the war, for there were six Taubes 
overhead all dropping bombs. 

As we neared the hospital shrapnel began 
to fall. The bombs, of course, fell all round. 
I picked up one man wounded and unconscious 
and took him on with me in the car. A 
woman was killed at the gate of the hospital, 
and one man died on the doorstep. There 
are barracks just near by, and all the soldiers 
got out of hand and fired their rifles madly in 
all directions. Two men wounded by their 
own comrades were carried in to us after- 
wards. We settled down to work, and had 
three operations between four and seven. 
Just as we were preparing to go home stretchers 



54 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

began to come in from different parts of the 
town where bombs had fallen. I wired home 
not to expect me till they saw me, and we 
worked on till 9.30, when all the operations 
were over. The wounded were all over the 
town, and all the other hospitals filled up too. 
The casualties were thirty dead and over a 
hundred wounded, for the streets were crowded 
when the Taubes came. The beasts flew 
round and round, thus hardly a quarter of 
the town escaped. All our airmen had gone 
to the front. I suspect spies of having in- 
formed the enemy ; there was nothing to stop 
them and they did just what they liked. 
They flew very very low, and I saw the pilot's 
face in one quite plainly as he turned. I got 
home to find that five large pieces of shrapnel 
had fallen in the garden. Apparently the 
confusion in the town whilst the actual raid 
was going on was terrific. The troops lost 
their heads and fired quite aimlessly, killing 
men and women before they could be stopped. 
One couldn't be excited in the hospital, 
there was no time. If a doctor is cutting off 
things and calls out " pansement " or " acquae 
lacta " like a pistol-shot at you, you somehow 
find it even if you don't know what it is. 
One just works without the faintest under- 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 55 

standing of what one is doing. After it was 
all over we collapsed, and sat in the model 
hospital kitchen with a petrol cooking-lamp 
for our only light (the electric light had been 
turned off at the main and we operated by 
candle illumination only), and drank hot tea 
and Zwicka and tried to recover. I don't 
feel that it is over yet ; we shall have them 
back before the morning. They have only an 
hour to fly for more bombs. But twice in 
twenty-four hours is rather hard on one's 
nerves ; and I forgot to say that they came 
last night too, but I was too sleepy to get up 
and listen. 

It was a pretty sight to-day with the puffs 
of white smoke like cigarette rings against the 
blue sky, a curious contrast to the terrorised 
faces round. The bombs fell absolutely all 
round the hospital, but did not hit it, thank 
God ! The populace is raging, and will prob- 
ably lynch some German women who are still 
allowed to be at large. All the men are, of 
course, interned, in the hotels. It has been a 
bit too strenuous with the hospital work thrown 
in, but it is exhilarating to watch the men 
recover. Up till now they are getting on 
splendidly in pavilion number four. We have 
over a hundred. 



56 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Later. — They came again last night — six 
Taubes. That makes three visits in twenty- 
four hours. I was too worn out to move, 
though the whole house shook and the thuds 
sounded uncomfortably close. This morning 
I am told that they were all round us, and 
that the rest of the household spent the night 
in the cellar. I think that I had the best of 
it. I remember thinking to myself : " If it 
is going to happen I had rather be asleep," 
but I was really too weary to care. When 
one has stood for six and a half hours watching 
people under chloroform one does not mind 
what happens after. My feet were wrapped 
in alcohol bandages, they were so sore, and it 
would have taken the whole German army to 
move me. 

I was sent for very early by my doctor 
chief and we worked feverishly, the surgeons 
only half dressed in their uniform, myself in 
ordinary clothes, as there was no time to get 
into overalls. Twenty women and children 
are laid out in the mortuary. I have ceased 
to be affected by corpses, but I hate amputa- 
tions. To-day, whilst we were operating, an 
actor who helps stood holding an artery in a 
pair of tweezers whilst the doctor tied, and 
suddenly said ; " Shakespeare was right when 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 57 

he said " and then he spouted in Rou- 
manian the passage about " loosing one's digits 
is worse than losing one's life." 

On the way home I drove past a house 
where live some friends of mine. They had a 
most wonderful escape in the night ; fortu- 
nately all are alive, no one knows why. Three 
bombs must have hit their house, which was 
all dropping to bits, and all the windows were 
blown into the rooms, and one wooden bed 
looked like a sort of fancy pincushion as a 
result. Every single thing except the four 
people who lived there were shattered, a huge 
hole gaped in each bedroom, and there were 
apertures in the walls made by bits of the 
pavement forced in from outside. 

It had ceased to be surprising this afternoon 
when those devils flew back to us again just 
after we had got to the hospital after lunch 
and were well started on an operation ! But 
this time we nearly had a panic with the 
wounded. I stayed on in the ward with the 
helpless cases, for they said : " If you will stay 
with us, we are not afraid." The lightly 
wounded were sent to the cellar. 

As I write it is about 6.30, and, according 
to the time the Taubes take to reload, they 
should be back by seven, I worked out the 



58 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

ethics of one's feelings towards them to-day 
at lunch and came to the conclusion that : 
(i) if one is killed one does not mind ; (2) if 
one is wounded one only minds for a time ; 
and (3) if one is neither one minds less. But 
something from outside should be done to help 
us, for this has become a bombarded town and 
is defenceless. Our own aeroplanes are needed 
at the front, but some French aviators are ex- 
pected to-day, which will make us feel a little 
safer. The hospital, standing as it does in the 
centre of a military quarter, is an objective 
for the raids, and I must honestly confess that 
I don't like going back there a bit. But we 
now have a dozen really serious cases which 
require hard nursing, and one knows that if 
one did not go perhaps no one else would. 

The peasant soldiers who are brought back 
wounded from the front are paralysed with 
terror born of ignorance of the operating- 
table. But the convalescents help the morale, 
for they tell the others that " operation is 
good," and the poor wretches have begun to 
plead for " operation at once." I have heard 
some say : " Please, doctor, cut it off ; do not 
try to save it," but so far he has rescued a lot 
of limbs by waiting. He himself, naturally, is 
learning daily, and I have heard him pronounce 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 59 

that " if he saves that leg, he will believe in 
anything." Morale makes three-quarters of a 
victory : the men, who are all children, say- 
wistfully : " If you say that arm is all right, 
I will take the soup and go to sleep." Yes- 
terday two men cried because the doctor post- 
poned their operations till to-morrow, and 
one of the three who were to be treated at 
once had a nervous collapse from pure fright. 

It is all so wonderful to me ! To see the 
big muscles cut away and through, to see a 
horrible wound grow daily less painful instead 
of a life lost through gangrene. A man 
pumping blood three days ago from a main 
artery is to-day eating heartily and getting 
well. Contrary to all existing regulations, I 
have procured permission to give hot tea and 
a cigarette after the operations when the men 
ask for it themselves and no active injury can 
result. It saves their morale and quietens their 
nerves. They have the wonderful recupera- 
tive power of undeveloped nervous systems, 
and many can stand almost anything without 
anaesthetics. 

Curious ! A month ago I felt faint when I 
saw blood or smelt a nasty smell. 

Later. — The aviators have come, and there 
was no raid last night, but we got no sleep, 



60 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

for we are creatures of habit and missed the 
noise. It is now 7.30 a.m., and they ought 
to be with us soon. The town is restless and 
shows signs of panic. Our servants rush to 
the cellar whenever the alarm bells ring to 
say that the Taubes have crossed the Danube. 
This is the new system : when the bells have 
spoken no one is allowed out. They sounded 
this morning very early, and we are sitting 
expecting the raid at any minute. As a matter 
of fact — there they are ! ! ! 

Later. — One bomb fell over our garden wall 
and smashed all the kitchen windows. I 
chased round the house to see the departing 
Taube's tails. The household is in the cellar, 
for the noise is still going on. Here they are, 
the raiders, coming back, according to sound — 
no, they are off again. The aeroplanes carry 
about six or eight bombs each, so if one can 
locate six or eight crashes to each machine in 
sight, you can feel more or less peaceful for a 
few hours. The day raids are the easiest to 
manage ; one can see the way they are going 
and make for the opposite direction. 

People have been hurt quite near our house ; 
a bomb fell in the street just where I can't 
see the place from my window, killing three 
and wounding two who passed there. 





; : , 



AT HER LOOM 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 61 

A very shaky domestic has just carried up 
my breakfast. Personally I don't like the 
cellar, and prefer a part of the house where 
I can see and move about. The raid was a 
short one and is already over. I presume that 
our aviators went up and did some chasing. 

Later. — I went round to the hospital to find 
that a patient had been killed in his bed in 
pavilion number three. The men there are 
clamouring to be moved, and if this sort of 
thing goes on the whole place will have to be 
evacuated, though there is no alternative site 
where greater safety can be provided. But a 
panic would be fatal. It would spread to the 
town and bring about a rush for the trains. 

The streets did not offer a pretty sight. 
Several dead horses lay about, and a horse 
bleeds prolifically. 

It's an odd life ; one has to think how many 
are standing it hourly in the trenches. No 
one can realise a real air bombardment until 
they have been in it any more than I did 
before I saw it. I know now what the Bible 
meant when it told us that a " heart turned 
to water." I am frankly frightened, and had 
no appetite for lunch ! 

Later. — We have had two days' peace and 
feel much better, but my nerve has decidedly 



62 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

gone. It's seeing the wounded that does it. 
One does not realise the horrors properly until 
a raid is well over. Three of the poor legless 
fellows who were brought into the hospital 
died. I am trying to console myself with the 
remaining one, who will recover. The man 
who works a quick-firer in the hospital grounds 
blew his own stomach out and a child was 
killed beside him. They lay there for a day 
before they were found. Three men were 
blown to bits in another pavilion. I think 
that the Red Cross flags should be taken down ; 
it is obvious that the Germans try for them. 

Undoubtedly the enemy are well informed, 
because they always manage to come in force 
when our own fliers are away. They are 
scared of the Frenchmen and have never 
given them a chance. Apparently the night 
raids are the work of a Zeppelin and the six 
Taubes only come by day. They can see this 
town as easily as a map in the hand. 

Zepp and Taube bombs behave differently, 
and procedure for avoiding them is contra- 
dictory. At least this is my own theory. 
The latter are small and pointed and timed, 
they pierce the floor and explode downstairs, 
so one climbs away from them ; the former 
explode on contact, so one makes for the 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 63 

underground. But night time is the time 
for sleep, and one really prefers to trust to 
luck when one is tired out. So far we have 
been lucky. 

Later. — After forty-eight hours of peace 
they came again, the six Taubes. But this 
time it was simply a very amusing entertain- 
ment. As luck would have it our French 
airmen are at home, and the chase went right 
over our heads. Apparently they feel so safe 
that they come unarmed, and they were 
driven about distractedly all over the town 
and never dropped a bomb. Unfortunately 
we have, as yet, no fast machines, and they 
all got away ; but, Lord ! how they did have 
to hustle ! 

The Red Cross flags have been removed 
from all the hospitals, and the men are slowly 
regaining their nerve. The doctor and I 
carry harmless doses of bromide and dole it 
out to people who look as if they need it. 
Somehow I don't think that we shall have 
many more of these attacks. It was so obvious 
to-day that the enemy were demoralised by 
even the mildest show of resistance. 

Later. — The warnings we get are beginning 
to bore us. We had two to-day and no raid. 
There are so many preparation whistles and 



64 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

then so many calming whistles that one is 
liable to get mixed up. I was in my bath 
with one and doing my hair with the other. 
I did not hurry over either performance. 
One is accustomed to anything nowadays, and 
the French airmen give one a feeling of 
security. 

One of them had an unfortunate experience 
to-day. He was flying home in the twilight, 
back from a little private " strafe," and 
travelling very low. The Roumanian soldiers 
fired at him under the impression that he was 
a solitary raider. He had to come down, and 
the populace set upon him with sticks and 
beat his head in and broke his jaw before they 
realised their mistake. 

The news from our front is rather vague. 
In fact, we have had none just lately. The 
last that we heard was that the Roumanians 
had a firm hold in Transylvania and that all 
was going well. But that was a week ago, 
and there has been nothing since. 

One cannot help feeling just a little worried. 
However, there is nothing to do except stick 
to one's own particular job. 

All the wounded in my pavilion call me 
" Little Mother " now, and I have grown to 
love each individual man. 



CHAPTER V 

October 191 6. — I have not had the heart to 
keep this diary for the last few weeks, the 
situation has so completely changed. Our 
air-raid excitements (which, by the way, 
have completely stopped) seem to have faded 
into absolute insignificance and into a very 
distant past when one still had a sense of 
humour. 

But it was all too true. The Germans were 
just — waiting. Waiting their own time, and 
that time came. We hardly know ourselves 
what has happened or how far and fast our 
army has retreated, but we know that things 
are very serious from the complete absence of 
reliable news. 

We are told that French and British officers 
are coming. They may save us yet, but they 
must come soon. Some of the Roumanians 
were splendid. These the peasant sons of 
peasant warriors who fought and won through 
in the days when war was war, not massacre. 
They are uncivilised enough to remember the 
f 65 



66 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

fighting science taught them in folk-songs : 
" Strike — strike hard ! " 

The arrival of a French command may 
still save the capital, but one doubts it, for the 
passes are obviously falling with incredible 
rapidity, and the wounded are coming in in 
hundreds. 

We now have thirty-five cases in each of 
our wards, planned to hold fifteen. They are 
packed like herrings, poor wretches, and lying 
two in a bed. We keep one room for g'an- 
grene cases ; but what is one room ? And 
there is no real operating-hall. Still, one does 
the best one can. And the doctor is a hero. 

It was inaccurate to say that the air raids 
are over — only they have become so unim- 
portant that one forgets them. They have 
slackened tremendously, and our air defences 
have been made more or less up to date. 
Yesterday, for instance, twenty bombs were 
dropped near the station and did no damage. 
On the other hand, an enemy machine was 
brought down near the suburbs — the others 
all made off into the sunset. 

Almost all the recent arrivals in the hospital 
have been operation cases. We are treating 
three trepanned heads, and all are going to 
live and think again. Sometimes I can hardly 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 67 

credit the fact that this woman, indifferent to 
blood and white bones and gangrene horrors, 
is myself. I had been inside one hospital in 
my life, and that when I was the person who 
was ill. One of the men in pavilion four has 
lost his knee-bone, but there is a possibility, 
apparently, of screwing one on. And another 
has a beautiful new jaw of gutta-percha. 
Once we saw him smile, and the whole room 
rocked with the laughter of the others. But 
the doctor and I are very proud of him. 

On the whole, if it were not so tragic, 
things would be rather funny. Everything 
seems so stark, staring mad. The town is 
beginning to panic, and I don't blame it. 
An attempt is being made to institute a 
Coalition Government, but I doubt whether 
they will find any combination to coalesce. 
We hear rumours of an advancing German 
army of 800,000 men, and half the town thinks 
that the Bulgarians have already crossed the 
Danube. If anything really serious happens 
we shall have great difficulty in getting away, 
for there are hardly any trains. It sounds 
impossible, but I was told to-day that we 
shall probably have to pack up and leave in 
forty-eight hours' time, to spend the winter 
in — well, we don't know where, but in the 



68 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

snow, anyway ! ! And this not because the 
Bulgars have crossed the frontier, but because 
the Germans really have rushed the passes and 
are marching rapidly towards us. 

I shall, of course, leave all my belongings 
behind, but I am prevented from starting to 
pack them safely away because that would 
frighten the servants. I tried to think of a 
few little things to take away as souvenirs, 
and then gave up in despair. For what is the 
use of trying to take anything in the two 
steamer-trunks which is all that will be allowed 
for our household ? If only we knew where 
we were going and how far, and whether 
by sea or land, things would be so much 
easier. 

We all had champagne to-night for dinner. 
Stocks are low, but if the Germans are really 
invading us — well, we certainly don't intend 
to leave anything worth having. We had a 
great discussion as to the rival merits of flight 
in a possible train or in our own visible motor. 
And we voted against the motor, for we shall 
have two hundred miles at least to travel, and 
the motor is weak. It is possible that spies 
may blow up the only railway line when the 
last moment comes. A Roumanian general 
came to tea and said : " We shall leave by 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 69 

night." I said : " Where to ? " He answered : 
" God knows ! " — which was encouraging ! 

If I don't pack soon, I know that we shall 
all start in a hurry in the middle of the night 
for an unknown destination and that I shall 
have time to collect nothing. On the other 
hand, if I do pack, we shall most certainly sit 
here for weeks and end by not going at all. 
Perhaps the second alternative is the wiser 
one, for one can always unpack again. I feel 
absolutely incoherent. 

Nevertheless, despite the general atmosphere 
of nervous uncertainty, we cling to the con- 
viction that things cannot really be as bad as 
we are told. Possibly every time that the 
Government or the General Staff have bad 
dreams in the night, we shall be ordered to 
evacuate the town within thirty-six hours. 
But this is our first alarm, and as such we are 
bound to treat it seriously. We are assured 
that if the army can hold the remaining passes 
for a fortnight, we shall be all right, for by 
that time Russian reinforcements will have 
arrived, also the French officers. But then 
we are told such a lot — that the Germans are 
already here, for instance. Anyway, the net 
result of this scare is quite unnecessary dis- 
comfort. If I pack as I am urged to do, why, 



70 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

then I want to start. To pack and stay is 
silly. 

At present preparations are in full swing to 
expedite us in two days' time, at dead of night, 
in a darkened train, so as to fool German 
aeroplanes, who are certain to follow the train 
and bomb it. The banks are packing, and, as 
far as I can judge, that train will contain 
seething crowds of humans, innumerable tea- 
baskets, and millions of money, besides the 
Government officials. They are now planning 
to pick us up in a round of motor-lorry loads, 
luggage included, at I a.m. It will be a sort 
of modern Noah's Ark. If the Germans suc- 
ceed in cutting the only railway line, we shall 
have to run their bombardment at Constanza 
and go off in a Russian man-of-war to Odessa. 
Whatever transpires, we shall not know until 
we have passed Ploesti where we are going ; 
we start " destination unknown " — if we start. 
But we have been promised houses to live in, 
which complicates the packing. How on 
earth house-linen, clothes and sundries are to 
fit into two steamer-trunks, I cannot conceive. 

Every time I go to the hospital nowadays 
the soldiers smile with pleasure and say : 
" So you have not yet run away ? " They 
will be left behind, I suppose, poor wretches ; 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 71 

and one can do nothing. Still, in a way they 
will be better off than we are. For really the 
prospect does not smile. All supplies of 
necessaries in the town are fast giving out. 
A great many of the shops are shut, and 
people rush about the streets looking dis- 
tracted. Apparently we are going to lack 
soap, food and fuel, so we shall be dirty, 
hungry and cold. And this indefinitely, for 
if the Germans overrun the country, Russia 
will be far too busy supplying her own army 
to send us civilians anything at all, wherever 
we may happen to be. 

Meanwhile some of the passes are still 
intact, and one cannot help thinking that a 
great deal of fuss is, perhaps, being made 
about nothing at all. 

Later. — If this diary of mine does not tally 
with history when history comes to be written, 
it will not be my fault. We get no news at 
all from the outside world, consequently all 
we hear is rumour, and that contradicts itself 
every half-hour. We are now living in a 
house that is completely stripped of all but 
the barest necessities. Every time anybody 
wants anything, it has to be unpacked from 
the place, usually unfindable, where it was 
stowed away. It is now a week since we were 



72 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

told that we were leaving in forty-eight hours, 
and we are still here. I knew that that would 
happen. It took us two and a half days to 
reach this state of living, which touches the 
maximum of discomfort, and we shall prob- 
ably continue in it for a few months and then 
unpack again. 

The air raids have stopped. The last Zeppe- 
lin dropped bombs on a German internment 
camp, and sixteen fat Germans succumbed as 
a result of this miscalculation. The rest of 
the interned have now been spread about all 
over the town, and spies have not delayed in 
passing on this information, which appears to 
have discouraged the raiders. 

The French General Staff is expected 
hourly, as are the Russian troops. On the 
whole, the population has recovered remark- 
ably well from the recent panic. 

With the usual contradictoriness of human 
nature, I am convinced that this peaceful 
interval is only the lull before a very un- 
pleasant storm, and feel, for the first time, 
that we shall really have to evacuate the 
town. Last week was such a whirlwind of 
flurried conjecture that one had no time to 
think, but we are now preparing with serious 
forethought for the discomfort that lies ahead. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 73 

The hospital still claims most of my time, but 
most of the original patients are convalescent, 
and few have come in just lately. 

Our latest excitement has been the dis- 
covery by a member of the American Legation 
of all kinds of horrors buried by the Germans 
in the German Legation garden. Cases of 
dynamite were found and tubes containing 
disease germs. It sounds incredible, and will 
produce headlines a mile high in our English 
ha'penny Press. Consequently no one will 
credit the tale. But it is true, and I have 
spoken of the thing with a man who assisted 
at the excavation. 

What nobody seems to realise is that this 
interval should be taken advantage of for the 
destruction of the immense stores of corn and 
oil lying all over the country. Naturally one 
hesitates to destroy outward and visible assets, 
but it is imperative that the Germans should 
not get them. To the simple layman's mind 
the obvious thing to do would be to pour one 
over the other and burn both. But when I 
suggested this I was laughed at. Insuperable 
difficulties lie in the way of destruction owing 
to the fact that the granaries lie immense 
distances apart in the heart of the provinces, 
and that communications are completely lack- 



74 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

ing. Effective measures would take weeks of 
time, which we will not be given. 

Later. — The news is bad again, and a second 
fiat has gone forth : we are to be deprived of 
our luggage, as evacuation is really imminent. 

I have never spent an odder day. We 
packed jam and sugar and all available soap 
into every spare corner. We all frankly for- 
got our lunch until past two and then found 
nothing in the house, so went without. We 
were told that we had twelve hours to finish 
up in and that the boxes would be called for 
at midnight. Of all the many terrible pack- 
ings that I have done on Eastern caravan 
journeys, this has been infinitely the worst. 
I know that I will wish that I had sent none 
of the things which now seem indispensable 
and that I will need all which I left behind. 
I have racked my brains to think of a place 
for three precious bottles of champagne, and 
have decided to stow them in a hold-all with 
the family eiderdowns. The linen-trunk is 
stuffed with jam — jam that came from Eng- 
land, and possibly the last that I shall ever eat. 
I get occasional attacks of maudlin sentiment 
over small possessions which I am obliged to 
leave ; on the other hand, am abandoning 
articles of considerable value without a qualm. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 75 

Not a bed has been made in the whole house, 
and, once the luggage has gone, we shall have 
to camp out 011 sofas. 

I went to the kitchen to try and get a little 
tea, and when I came back found a large party 
of friends with their servants, luggage and 
children in the drawing-room, asserting cheer- 
fully that they had come as they thought " it 
would be nicer for us all to go together." 
I'm in the state of mind where I would say 
" Yes " to anything until the moment arrived 
when I said " NO," then, if the person argued, 
I would shoot it — I mean her — him. All the 
luggage is stacked in the drawing-room — train 
luggage, house luggage, friends' luggage, ser- 
vants' luggage. It is pandemonium. 

Now I am lying down waiting for tea. 
Every bone in my body, every nerve in my 
mind aches with excitement. Of the military 
situation the English papers could tell us 
more than we know ourselves, for we hear 
not one blessed thing. Except that the lug- 
gage goes to-night and we to-morrow — if only 
we knew where to ! ! 

Besides, the only certain thing is that the 
luggage goes to-night. For all we know the 
plans may have changed by to-morrow, and 
we shall be sitting here without one single 



76 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

practical belonging in the world. And then 
the problem will be to find us all sleeping 
accommodation, for there is a young army in 
the house. We tell every one who comes to 
stay and camp out. If we start it will be all 
right ; if we don't, there'll be all night to 
make beds in and all next day to unmake them 
in ; and there is no soap and there are no 
towels, and there will most certainly be no 
hot water ever again, because I packed the 
last precious bundles of wood that remained 
to us into a suit-case with the boots ! 

We have just heard that there are 30,000 
people waiting at the station. There is only 
one station. If this is true, we have decided 
that they can take our luggage, that the 
Germans can arrive in their thousands, but we 
will not move into a crowd like that unless 
we are pushed there — and pushed hard. 

The cook has appeared quite ready to start 
with six dead chickens hanging on a string 
from her arm. She says that they will be 
useful. We are now going to dine off cheese 
and go to bed to wait for to-morrow. 

Later. — We woke to find the luggage gone. 
My bed was funny : a little travelling cushion 
and myself upon it, covered with a dust-sheet 
and a fur coat. Everybody looks tired. And 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY yy 

now we have been told that we are not going 
to-day and that it may not be necessary for 
us to go at all. I have told the cook to prepare 
two of her chickens. 

The luggage returned to us at eleven with 
the message that all heavy baggage leaves 
to-morrow. And now we don't know whether 
this means " no luggage van with us " or a 
" trunk van on our train." It is an important 
point. Should one keep necessary things back 
for the train and there turn out to be no 

van Oh dear ! I am tired. And the 

unpleasant fact remains that all our linen, 
clothes and blankets depart into vague and 
unknown space at five o'clock to-morrow, and 
that we get left with nothing except the 
clothes we stand up in, four dead chickens, 
and a pot of jam which I unpacked and 
opened this morning when the trunks came 
home. 

In short, we stay here, notified each day, if 
a new pass falls, to " go at once." In this 
case we start, and probably get told when we 
reach the train that the pass has been walked 
back into again and that we are to stay. 

I went back to work after lunch, and found 
that a wounded Austrian prisoner had just 
been brought in. I asked him how they felt 



78 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

about the war in his country, and he answered 
in German : " Oh, it is sometimes a good war 
and often a bad one. I want to sleep." That 
is the way we all feel. The Queen is evacuat- 
ing her hospital, and now perhaps they will 
have a try to do the same with ours. 

A few English refugees turned up at our 
house to-day. One, a woman, said with a 
tearful smile : " Will my throat be cut ? " I 
don't think she was sure herself whether she 
was joking or not. We are all in a sort of 
hysterical state and laugh at anything. And 
we certainly look very funny. The house 
looks odd too, for there are queer makeshifts 
in every room where people slept, and hosts 
of strange belongings. So long as the trunks 
are standing in a solid-looking pile in the hall 
and within reach one can afford to smile, but 
to-morrow at this hour things will look very 
different if they have gone and we are still 
here. People cling to such funny treasures on 
these occasions. One man has his pockets 
bulging with war-maps, and all the women 
rain powder-puffs from every receptacle. Ser- 
vants clasp their food, and a few stray children 
who have turned up are surrounded by bottles 
of milk. The house has become an hotel, 
because we feel lost and bewildered and 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 79 

prefer to keep together, though there is little 
conversation. 

The streets are empty — not a cab is in 
sight. All the shutters are drawn in the 
shops, and the only sign of life is to be found 
about the hospitals. The weather is wonder- 
ful. Brilliant sunshine gives glow to the 
autumn tints, and the whole world is clean — 
smelling of recent rain and wind. When I 
think of the cold and the snow and the un- 
known miseries that are before us all, of the 
disease which is bound to come, of this happy- 
little town as I knew it first, barely a year 
ago, I want, like the Austrian soldier, to " go 
to sleep." 



CHAPTER VI 

November 191 6. — Half my prophecy came 

true : we are still sitting quite solidly in 

Bucarest. Luckily, however, our luggage never 

left us, for the panic quietened with incredible 

rapidity and we were told that all danger was 

over. The Germans were repulsed at the 

frontier during the days that we got no news 

and have not advanced since. The French 

General Staff has arrived and installed itself 

in a manner which gives us confidence most 

disproportionate to the small amount which 

reason tells us that it is humanly capable of 

accomplishing. A British aviator flew over in 

his aeroplane from Salonika, and this gives us 

the cheerful feeling that we are in touch 

with our own army. This despite the fact 

that a conquered Serbia lies between. The 

only direct consequence of the panic is that 

innumerable people seem to be lost, and the 

general mix-up is indescribable. I myself 

simply cannot understand why the Germans 

are not already here. 

80 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 81 

It took us several days to reconstruct life 
along previous and already somewhat primi- 
tive principles. The various visiting families 
were sorted out and returned, together with 
their respective belongings, to their own 
homes. Necessities were extracted from our 
own trunks and we have resumed a normal 
existence, which comprises punctual though 
frugal meals and occasional baths. But the 
danger, to my mind, is by no means over, and 
only the top layers have been stirred in my 
trunks. 

Our hospital is full up again with new 
arrivals, and I work there daily. The men 
are dears, and I have discovered that a few 
parcels of cheap sweets distributed make up 
for long hours of almost unbearable suffering. 
The few amongst them who can read in- 
variably choose the Bible or prayer-books from 
out the literature at their disposal. Unfor- 
tunately I don't know enough of the language 
to ask them consecutive questions about their 
experiences, but I doubt whether they would 
be capable of coherent answering. All look 
dazed and worried when fighting is mentioned. 
We have been entirely without news again 
for a week, and somehow we envisage from 
this disturbing happenings in the near future. 



82 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

We have been strongly advised to keep all 
belongings packed in case of a sudden emer- 
gency, because the next time the Germans 
advance in force they will be so near that we 
shall have but a few hours' notice, and it will 
not be a false alarm. The direct result of 
this is that it makes one nervous to leave the 
house at all. It would be - so upsetting to 
come home one day and find everything gone ! 
The only thing left to do is to try and appre- 
ciate the humorous side of life as we are 
living it. 

Letters arrive from home written by people 
who know the wealth of this country, urging 
us to burn the corn — as if we kept it in a 
little box on our writing-tables ! All energies 
are concentrated with trying to impress the 
people with the urgent necessity of doing so 
and of breaking up the petrol plants. It is 
hard to make them understand that the 
German invasion has only been delayed a 
little and that it will surely come. One can 
only be thankful for this short respite, which 
gives them a chance of making the enemy 
conquest less lucrative for him than it would 
otherwise have proved. But the country folk 
refuse to destroy their property. They say 
that the British Bureau can destroy its own 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 83 

and that they will offer every facility but no 
actual help, whatever such ambiguity may 
mean. It is hard to blame them : corn stands 
to them for past, present and future existence, 
and one must be superhuman willingly to 
annihilate all three. 

Later. — We are now completely stranded in 
an almost deserted town, for our belongings 
have actually left us. Indelibly branded upon 
my mind is a moonlit picture of a Govern- 
ment servant perched high on a mountain of 
trunks piled in inextricable confusion at dead 
of night into the motor-lorry that finally 
arrived, at half an hour's notice, to take them 
away. The man bumped off into the night 
surrounded by bottles of drinking water and 
waving farewell with a fresh-lit cigarette that 
glowed a cheerful red as he disappeared round 
a corner of the road. It seems quite impos- 
sible that we shall ever see him or his inanimate 
charges again, for we do not know where they 
went. Of our own departure we hear nothing ; 
in fact, the news is supposed to be better again 
to-day. 

The youngest son of the Queen has died 
after terrible suffering. At such a moment it 
seems almost more than a woman should be 
asked to bear. Nevertheless his mother still 



84 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

works at the hospitals, and her soldiers love to 
see her. 

One of our English aviators, newly arrived, 
turned up to-day after having been lost for 
nearly a week. Apparently he has had a most 
exciting time. After landing in Bulgaria by 
accident, he was chased by soldiers and 
managed to get into the air again, although 
his compass was out of order. He then dis- 
covered a river and descended low towards it, 
only to get shot at by a monitor. Instead of 
flying away, he pursued the boat and raked it 
with his machine-gun until the crew jumped 
into the water. He finally made a guess at 
the direction of " home," and got there ! ! 
He reports a " gorgeous time," and fell upon 
food here after three days' fast. This kind of 
story cheers everybody up. 

Now that the trunks have really gone and 
we are left with nothing but the clothes we 
stand up in, makeshift beds our only resting- 
place and ourselves flreless and uncomfortable, 
things seem to have really quietened down. 
We get innumerable Zepp alarms and occa- 
sional raids have begun again, but the con- 
stant presence of a few armed machines of our 
own has shaken the wonderful German nerve 
considerably, and their men usually make off 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 85 

without having done any serious damage. 
The Roumanian army is fighting magnificently 
on all the fronts, and there is just a chance of 
our holding out. 

But the whole traffic of the country is 
naturally terribly disorganised, and really one 
wonders why anything gets done. A man 
who had to go to the Russian frontier recently 
on business took fifty hours to accomplish a 
journey that once took twelve. The poor 
wretch had to stand all the way between two 
windows in a train of fifty carriages, crowded 
inside and on the roof. He arrived back 
more dead than alive, having paid two franks 
for one slice of bread, and obtained no other 
food. If a big rush comes, it will be terrible 
on that single railway line, and I fear that 
hundreds will succumb. 

Bucarest has become a veritable Tower of 
Babel. The streets are full of foreign uniforms 
all rushing in different directions and looking 
very busy. We are told that further quan- 
tities of French and British officers are due, 
also detachments of motor ambulances and 
Red Cross units. But the difficulties in the 
way of their actual movements are stupendous. 
A British Red Cross hospital, complete, with 
twenty-eight doctors and nurses, has indeed 



86 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

been heard of somewhere on its way out from 
home, but they are all stuck somewhere on 
the road and quite untraceable. When one 
hears of contretemps like this and sees the 
daily horrors due to just the lack of the things 
which we know to be coming and which never 
seem to come, one grows discouraged beyond 
words. 

I have been visiting other hospitals lately 
with a view to getting a general idea of con- 
ditions and supplies. The whole system is so 
disorganised that there is no need even for an 
official permit for such expeditions. Anybody 
is allowed to go anywhere, provided that one 
does not look like a German. I had been 
under the impression that our own hospital 
was primitive, but, alas ! it is luxurious and 
well stocked compared to the others that I 
saw. The two best and grandest were over- 
crowded in treble proportion to their powers 
of accommodation, but they had, at least, an 
atmosphere of antiseptics and stereotyped sur- 
roundings ; all the others were pathetic. The 
men lay on the ground, which was covered 
with wooden boards. Some shared a mattress 
with four or five others, the rest lay without 
even a pillow to their heads. It was obvious 
that they had not been attended to for hours ; 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 87 

this not from neglect, but for the reason that 
the doctors are working night and day to keep 
belated pace with the wounded who- arrive in 
batches of several hundreds at a time. I 
passed the station, where a trainload of them 
had just come in. They lay out in the waste 
ground behind the building, in full sunlight, 
pitiful in their helplessness. They had no 
water and no food, just a few cigarettes, and 
I did not hear one single moan or complaint. 
I was told that these were the lucky ones, for 
arrangements had been made for them to be 
called for before sunset. During the short 
half-hour I spent there we had an air raid — 
quite a bad one. Over thirty bombs dropped 
near us, but fortunately no one was hurt, 
though one of the ladies who had come to 
distribute a little food and drink was nearly 
buried by an explosion. 

I am told on all sides that the chloroform 
will shortly give out, even though it is most 
sparingly used. As for the ordinary hospital 
requisites, they are simply non-existent. From 
the point of view of the unfortunate wounded, 
my expedition brought me to the pessimistic 
conclusion that it would be a godsend to them 
if the Germans captured the town. Therein 
lies their only hope of obtaining supplies. 



88 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Later. — The news is bad again, and the 
advancing Germans are reported to be in the 
plains and well over the Austrian frontier. 
Up to the present moment there are no signs 
of panic, and it is possible now that there will 
not be another even if we do have to leave in 
a hurry. For the population has not only 
learnt a lesson during the flrs't scare, but also 
it has had time to get used to the idea that 
the loss of a capital does not necessarily mean 
the loss of a country. I fancy that a great 
proportion of the society people who have 
nothing to do with the Court or with the 
Government will not attempt to leave the 
capital even if the Germans arrive. What 
would be the object ? They are non-com- 
batants and can do the Germans no possible 
harm, and it will serve the Roumanian cause 
better to leave every facility for those who 
have to go and " carry on " in whatever place 
they may finally land in, which place will be 
the less overcrowded for each individual who 
stays behind. 

The warning has once again gone round to 
all who will have to leave when the moment 
comes for them to hold themselves in readi- 
ness for an immediate start, and I believe that, 
at the slightest further enemy advance, we 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 89 

shall really be off at last. The Queen has sent 
her children to the country, where they are 
supposed to be out of the immediate danger 
of air raids. She herself intends to remain 
here until the last minute, and is wonderfully 
plucky and calm. 

A curious sort of social life has begun again, 
though business is at a standstill. Bucarest 
was obliged to release several hundred interned 
German clerks, as they were the only ones who 
could carry on the enterprises started before 
the war. A dangerous proceeding, but there 
was nothing else to do. They stand about in 
groups in the Calea Vittorese, talking German, 
and made me so angry one day when I went 
for a walk that I went home and shut myself 
up. It was apparently absolutely vital to 
allow them their freedom — even the banks 
had not the personnel to work without them. 

The Roumanians are optimistic as a race 
and fight instinctively against depression, but 
they like to be cheerful en bande, and become 
gloomy, individually, when they find them- 
selves alone. So there are plenty of friendly 
little tea-parties, where the only thing lacking 
is the tea and the food that habitually supports 
it. Men, women and children alike work all 
day, but, when evening comes, they foregather 



9 o A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

and even make a little music. It is then that 
the wildest rumours spread. The French and 
British officers are very popular, and one meets 
them on terms of intimacy with their hosts 
wherever they find time to go. One sees less 
of the Russians. 

The air raids, although ineffective in most 
cases, are annoying. They frighten the 
wounded and upset the people, whose nerves 
are still jumpy from the shadow of evacua- 
tion. And they keep alive in us, who would 
otherwise be tranquil, a constant fear of what 
is still to come. My personal opinion is that 
the Government would do well to evacuate 
this town now, and as quickly and quietly as 
possible, so as to avoid the rush when the last 
moment comes, as it most inevitably will. It 
is so hard to know what to believe nowadays. 
One is told at breakfast that the Germans are 
well on their way back to Austria, and then 
hears after lunch that their scouts have. been 
seen near Bucarest. One makes no plans for 
the morrow, and just lives on from day to day 
with the frightened feeling that all is not so 
well as we are told, and that we shall have a 
very complete and sudden awakening soon 
from the present interval of peace and quiet. 

Later. — Quite an excitement ! ! ! All the 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 91 

whistles are blowing madly and all the bells 
are ringing. This heralds another big raid. 
I wonder if it will really come off ; we have 
not had a serious one for weeks, and one has 
begun to mistrust all these warnings which so 
often culminate in nothing. 

Yes, here they come. The big new guns do 
make a noise compared to the miserable little 
pops we used to hear. Blase as I have grown, 
this is unusually thrilling, and I am going out 
to see what is happening. 

Later. — Well, that was the worst attack we 
have ever had. It lasted well over an hour. 
Bombs fell near the Bank and the Post Office ; 
and, of course, in the vicinity of every hos- 
pital. The town dies away nowadays at the 
first alarm, the streets empty as if by magic, 
consequently few people are killed. Apparently 
thirteen bombs exploded in the garden of the 
country house where the Royal children were 
sent last week, but nobody was hurt, although 
the house was hit. Even the fires which 
started were safely extinguished. It must 
have been a narrow escape, and proves how 
well informed are the Germans of all current 
events. 

Now that the excitement is over, we have 
other and more important things to think 



92 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

about, for the order has come to start, and 
to start as soon as possible, for Jassy. We are 
to be allowed to take some extra luggage with 
us, and are told that the original cases, de- 
spatched a fortnight or so ago, will be waiting 
for us when we arrive. It all sounds too good 
to be true after the scanty attention which 
we had expected to receive, and I am more 
thankful than I can say that the time for 
moving has really come. We have ransacked 
the few shops that still do business, and 
bought up any remaining stores. There is no 
point in leaving anything for the Germans. 
Up to the present there is no sign of panic. 
We feel almost as if we were going off for a 
long week-end, as the absence of all heavy 
luggage makes everything easier. 

I went to the hospital for the last time, 
though the men did not realise it a bit. They 
have not been told that the Germans are 
within marching distance of the town. Where's 
the use ? It would only frighten them, and 
they already have enough to bear. They will 
discover it soon, and one hopes that they will 
not suffer. I hated leaving the men who were 
making good recoveries ; one has learnt to 
take such a personal interest in the hard cases 
and to know all their little idiosyncrasies so 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 93 

well that one has grown fond of them as 
individuals. They seem so forlorn somehow, 
and stranded. 

A few sportsmen have started off on expedi- 
tions to encourage the peasants to destroy as 
much corn as they can manage to set alight. 
Apparently a good deal has already been 
accomplished on the quiet, and we still have 
a few clear days ahead in which much can be 
done. All that we hear now is rumour fan- 
tastic. The Government keeps its own counsel 
and refuses to give any information beyond 
the announcement that all British subjects 
would do well to leave Bucarest as quickly as 
possible, and that arrangements are being 
made for their journey, and for the small 
amount of baggage that remains to them. 
Nothing is said about the kind of accommoda- 
tion we are likely to find in Jassy. It is a 
town which bears the same relationship to the 
capital as does Norwich to London, and was 
already slightly over-populated before the 
war. I was there once in the autumn of last 
year, and recall a sort of pretentious village of 
low-lying plaster houses each one of which 
was surrounded by a garden. Gardens are 
nice adjuncts to country life, but they do not 
promise enticing accommodation for winter 



94 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

months. There is in us all the worrying pre- 
monition that those amongst us who are not 
the very first arrivals there will have a quite 
remarkably uncomfortable time ! ! However, 
as there is only going to be one train and we 
shall, consequently, arrive together at Jassy 
station, the confusion can only begin when 
we get there, so the only thing left for us to 
do as preparation is to learn how best to grab 
our hand-luggage and run. 

We are all cheerful, and opinion is unani- 
mous that it is satisfactory to be moving at 
last. I do not think that the populace has 
been told that the exodus is imminent. The 
town is far too quiet. When the real rush 
begins, there are bound to be terrible scenes. 

News has just come of a steady German 
advance and that the need for haste is very 
urgent. 



CHAPTER VII 

December 191 6, J assy. — Well, we have 
reached Jassy, and have not yet recovered 
from the surprise of having actually got 
somewhere and being able to sit down. 

Early in the morning of our last day in 
Bucarest, we sallied forth into the almost 
deserted streets and collected two cabs after 
nearly an hour's search. We locked them 
bodily into our own courtyard, so as to make 
certain of their actuality. At 1.30 we heard 
that there was a real panic in the town, and 
we were advised to leave our house for the 
station at five o'clock. It was stated that the 
luggage — what remained of it — would be called 
for at two. At 5.20 we were still sitting 
dejectedly on top of it — naturally nothing had 
come. Time was a very serious object, and 
we decided to abandon all save the tea-baskets 
and travelling blankets, which could be piled 
into our two precious vehicles. 

At the station we found a seething crowd 
and a train standing, into which all Bucarest 

95 



96 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

was trying to get. I positively refused to 
board it or even go near it, feeling somehow 
that there must be another one somewhere. 
We found the station-master and told him 
that we were foreigners, and he led us through 
dark passages (by this time it was six o'clock) 
to a distant platform, where we found a long 
line of carriages, engineless, dark and locked. 
Apparently no notice had been received that 
foreigners and diplomats were really leaving. 
We established ourselves firmly on the step of 
one of the wagons and sent into the town for 
a key. Within half an hour we were standing 
fighting for that carriage ; it took that amount 
of time for others to find the empty train. 
The key arrived and we surged in, a seething 
mass of people, moving in waves. The doors 
were banged on the coat-tails of the last man 
in, and the train started before we had even 
formed a proper queue in the passage. Most 
of the women were offered seats, the rest of 
the passengers stood or lay on the floor amongst 
the baggage ; there was no water, there was 
no light, there was no food. The clock had 
been put back a year or so and we were back 
in Serbia on our journey to the Danube, only 
there were fourteen people in the carriage 
instead of eight. Russian soldiers were en- 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 97 

camped in their hundreds on the platforms of 
the stations where we stopped ; Russian nurses 
travelled with us in the dining-car ; Russian 
officers stood in the passages and came in at 
intervals to ask our business — these were the 
Russians who had begun to arrive too late. 
It was pandemonium let loose. Those few 
who had tea-baskets fed the others who had 
none. Again and again until I was bored 
silly, my poor little kettle boiled until it boiled 
itself out and died. One man had bought a 
string of sausages during those last frantic 
minutes at the Bucarest station, and a Russian 
officer produced some bread and a little 
chocolate. That is all the food that fourteen 
people shared for twenty hours ! What hap- 
pened in the other carriages I cannot even 
imagine. There was no communication pos- 
sible, for the passage-way between the com- 
partments was completely blocked. The 
journey from Bucarest to Jassy lasts nine 
hours in normal times : in the twentieth hour 
of our journey we steamed into the station 
there, to find that the prefect of the town had 
not been warned that refugees were coming 
and that nothing was forthcoming, neither 
accommodation nor food ! ! 
We sat at the station for four solid hours, 

H 



98 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

whilst all the people who had any energy left 
after our shattering night made rows in all 
directions. Where's the use of making rows 
on these occasions ? It seemed to my mind 
of far greater importance to hunt for food. 
After all, one can sleep anywhere provided 
that one is sufficiently tired, and the Lord 
knows that we were that, but food is a serious 
consideration. I found some, of sorts, in the 
secondary buffet of the station. A howling 
mob came and went, and I fought most 
fiercely for two slices of bread and a slab of 
chocolate. Two ramshackle cabs subsequently 
appeared from nowhere and were besieged. 
No one could attain them, and so we decided 
to become sensible and form a queue. We 
went off in batches of four at a time, those 
two miserable horses making trips until one of 
them lay down. The prefect stood outside 
the station entrance giving the drivers addresses 
where to go. When we arrived at the place 
allotted to us, we found one room and no 
bed — it was the sitting-room of a suburban 
villa. We had remained more or less cheerful 
until that moment, but it brought rebellion. 
There comes a time when one will accept no 
more, and we decided in our desperation to 
spend the night in the cab which had brought 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 99 

us, and which was attempting to sneak back 
to the station and fetch more tenants for that 
single room. Reason came to our rescue, and 
we returned inside it to the station to make 
inquiries about our luggage, which was sup- 
posed to have arrived at Jassy weeks before. 
The station-master was vague and distracted 
in his information, nevertheless he gave us the 
address of an Englishman living in Jassy who 
had received a large consignment of Bucarest 
baggage a few days previously. By this time 
it was pitch dark, but we climbed back un- 
daunted into the faithful cab. Even the tea- 
baskets were still with us. The horses began 
to move in a sort of staggery fashion, but when 
we reached the foot of a steep cobbled hill 
which stretched into seeming infinity ahead of 
the carriage, they jibbed and refused to budge 
another inch. We got out and walked on for 
about half a mile according to the driver's 
instructions. An amazed Englishman opened 
the door of a depressingly tiny house and we 
proceeded to explain almost hysterically fast, 
incoherent from terror lest he should close it 
upon us before we had time to finish. Yes, 
it was all right, our luggage was there. I 
could even see bits of it in the hall ; and the 
man invited us in. But we could see that 



ioo A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

something was worrying him, and when we 
got inside we found out what that something 
was. Two shake-down beds filled the tiny 
drawing-room and two British officers in 
pyjamas filled the beds. They had just arrived 
from Russia, and looked very nice and big and 
reliable. The house looked nice too, and 
warm and comfortable, and our faces must 
have told the owners that we had no inten- 
tion whatsoever of leaving it, because they 
made no attempt to turn us out. 

The two heavenly-looking beds were evacu- 
ated and turned out to be emergency sofas. 
The officers disappeared with their sleeping- 
bags into what was probably the pantry, and 
we sat up on the sofas eating bread-and- 
milk. It was nice to see our boxes lying 
about, and we felt friendly towards the whole 
world. We had reached that form of hysterical 
weariness in which one can do nothing but 
laugh, until, if one is a woman, one cries ; 
and our kind hosts, realising this, departed 
and left us to the sofas and to a really won- 
derful sleep. 

This morning a great many of our fellow- 
travellers keep on turning up. No one quite 
likes to inquire of them how they spent the 
night in view of our own obvious good fortune. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 101 

Our servants, at least a few of them, have 
appeared mysteriously from nowhere. They 
can only hold up their hands and gasp when 
the journey is mentioned. Most of them dis- 
covered our refuge and slept on the floor of 
the kitchen. I don't think that any house in 
the world has ever had such a disproportionate 
number of people in it as has this one and so 
little food ! Butter costs twenty francs a 
pound, and there is nothing else to be got 
except black bread. It is soft and fresh, and 
I love it, but one can't live on it for ever. 
Of course, things cannot remain in this con- 
dition ; in fact, the prefect came round this 
morning to say that we are to be given a 
house — a real house — of our own, and that 
soon. At present we are still waifs and strays 
at the mercy of people's kindness. 

Refugees fill the town, there is not a room 
to be had, and the real influx from Bucarest 
has not yet begun to arrive, far less that from 
the surrounding districts. Only two trains 
have come in, our own and the other which 
was in the Bucarest station when we left it. 
Telegrams from people who are lost are 
beginning to arrive, and one wire reached me 
from Bucarest to say that my motor was on 
its way and might be in Jassy within two 



102 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

days' time. The chauffeur, however, has 
always been an optimist. Luckily one of the 
servants who turned up this morning was the 
cook. She had succeeded in bringing three 
ducks with her intact, and so we are able to 
repay some of the hospitality so unceremoni- 
ously commandeered with a little food for the 
household. 

This country town which has so suddenly 
been called upon to turn into a capital is by 
no means fitted for the part. Situated as it 
is close to the big oil-fields, it was already 
overcrowded before the war broke out, and 
the builders have been trying vainly for the 
last two years to keep pace with the steadily 
growing importance of the place. It is exactly 
like seeing a country bumpkin dressed up in 
evening clothes as one finds them parodied on 
the musical comedy stage. Stone palaces 
built in modern Russian style brush the mud 
walls of peasant huts. The streets straggle 
about without aim or object and lead nowhere ; 
there are hardly any shops. There is, or 
rather was, one restaurant near the station. 
I say was, because there will soon be nothing 
left of it. People literally besiege its doors, 
and the walls shake from the influx of the 
crowd. It offers practically nothing to eat. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 103 

I met an unhappy couple who had struggled 
for two hours in the hungry throng, and who 
had finally succeeded in snatching a loaf of 
bread and a glass of mineral water, for which 
they were never asked to pay, as they never 
arrived within reach of the counter. What 
is going to happen when the rest of the refugees 
arrive from Bucarest, no one knows. 

I believe that the Court got here this morn- 
ing, but has not been seen. One presumes 
that the Royal Family at least will be given a 
roof to cover it. I tremble to think what 
would have happened to us had not these 
dear people taken pity on our plight. Dozens 
of our fellow-travellers are still wandering 
forlornly about in a despairing search for 
rooms. Our arrival was totally unexpected, 
as Jassy had been without news from the 
capital for two days. No one knows what is 
happening in Bucarest, or how near the 
Germans are, or whether those left behind 
will still have time to get away. 

This town is full of Russians, and one 
hardly feels as if one was in Roumania. The 
frontier is pleasantly close, and its proximity 
gives one a certain feeling of security, because, 
for all we know, we may be flying towards it 
in two or three days' time. I don't see any- 



104 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

thing at present that looks as if it were going 
to stop an advancing German army, nor did 
I along the whole route we travelled yester- 
day. We live in an absolutely distracted 
whirlwind of uncertainty. 

Later. — I do not know the day of the 
month or the week ! We have spent three 
nightmare periods of time sleeping when and 
where we could, fighting for our food amidst 
struggling masses of humanity, unwashed and 
underfed. 

And now, at last, there is peace. Peace, at 
least, for us, for we have been allotted a house, 
a palace, with six rooms and a garden in front 
of it where flowers grow. It has a black hole 
in the cellar for a kitchen, and no servants' 
accommodation whatsoever. There is a shanty 
attached where we have stored the motor 
(which arrived in the middle of one night), 
the chauffeur, our empty boxes and the ser- 
vants. They are not very comfortable, but 
they are better off than are most of their 
compatriots. 

I don't know whom this house belongs to. 
My bed is made of pink-and-orange plush, and 
the room is decorated with plaster columns. 
The fireplace is built into the wall in an alcove 
at the height of my waist. It is supported 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 105 

with carved scrolls and bits of plastered wood- 
work that look like organ piping. A quarter 
log of wood will just squeeze into the opening 
if one pushes hard, but we have not had the 
courage as yet to make fires — or beds. The 
kitchen has two plaster holes cut into the wall 
with an iron shelf across the top for a stove ; 
the beds have no mattresses and no pillows. 
It is easier to live on bread and to sleep under 
rugs. Naturally no water runs, because there 
are no pipes anywhere, and all that we have 
we go and fetch ourselves from the pump that 
we have been lucky enough to find in the back 
yard. There are no bells, and the electric 
light only half works. That is to say, in some 
of the rooms it does not light at all, and in 
the others it lights half-heartedly and then 
goes out ; personally I prefer the former, 
because one can prepare for it with candles. 
At present we have a good stock of candles, 
because I had the forethought to visit the 
nearest church and buy up all the wax tapers 
they had in stock. When they give out I 
don't know what will happen. 

I have discovered that the Queen is lodged 
with her children in a tiny house just outside 
the town. Now that she is provided for it is 
possible that most of the people who came 



io6 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

through on our train will find accommodation 
of some sort or other, though none of them 
can hope for anything but miserable discom- 
fort. We ourselves have realised, and quickly 
too, how quite extraordinarily lucky we are. 

A wire has reached us from some English 
friends in Bucarest saying that they had been 
waiting for twenty hours at the station with- 
out hope of a train, and that it was now 
rumoured that all trains are to be stopped, 
because Jassy could not hold more than the 
crowds who are already on their way ; to my 
mind, Jassy cannot possibly manage more 
people than are already here, and I think that 
it could easily dispense with a few thousand 
of those. The Germans are said to be twenty 
kilometres from Bucarest now, in which case 
they will be in the town within the next 
three days. There has been an enormous 
exodus on foot from the capital, we are told, 
quite apart from the hundreds who have left 
it in motors and carriages. All are on their 
way here, of course, and I cannot conceive 
how we are all to go on as we are living. It is 
past laughing. I can laugh if I am not hungry, 
but I am always hungry here. Our house 
food has given out, and we have had our last 
two meals at the restaurant. For lunch we 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 107 

secured an egg each and some bread, after an 
hour's fight for a plate — to be quite accurate, 
half an hour by the station clock. 

No one knows where anybody else is living, 
and one meets people by accident only in the 
street. They are always running frantically 
so as to get ahead of some one else for some- 
thing. One hardly remembers one's own 
address consecutively, and most people change 
it every day, because they are continually in 
the process of being handed on. There are 
hardly any cabs, and those few one sees in- 
variably have four or five Russian officers 
sitting inside them. Never was there such 
discomfort, though there has been, of course, 
much greater misery. But for the former 
this life beats anything that one could ever 
have imagined. Our journey through Serbia 
wasn't in it ; there, at least, we were always 
getting on and away, and with a haven in 
view; but here — well, we are just here, and, 
as far as we can judge of the situation, it can 
only get worse. 

The servants wear expressions, one and all, 
which one had learnt to associate with family 
funerals. The women tell me that they have 
blue bruises all over them from sleeping on 
the floor. None of them have had anything 



108 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

to eat all day, and they one and all look 
extraordinarily dirty. This, however, is what 
we do ourselves. We did not bring much in 
the way of supplies, even in the original 
luggage which preceded us, as space was 
limited and we needed it all for blankets and 
house linen, so now we are " saving our under- 
clothes," for we shall certainly be unable to 
have anything washed for weeks. 

I possess two boxes of English soap, which 
have to be guarded as if they contained the 
Crown Jewels. We allow ourselves a soap 
wash once a day, and even then the cake 
dwindles visibly. We have not had a bath 
since we started, and see no prospect of ever 
having another. The men decided to visit 
the public baths which exist, it appears, in the 
town, but one of the newly arrived English 
doctors flew round on a bicycle warning them 
each in turn not to go, because there was an 
epidemic of mange amongst the poor who 
patronised the establishments. Nice place, 
Jassy ! And we have got to live here now 
until the war is over ! 

Luckily we are having wonderful weather 
and the streets are dry. What they will be 
like when the snow comes, I tremble to think. 
The air is cold, but it is still the fresh cold of 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 109 

late autumn ; snow seldom falls here before 
January, and perhaps, by that time, we shall 
have been able to arrange for heating and hot 
water in some primitive way. I must confess 
that I don't quite see how this is going to be 
managed, but one's brain becomes singularly 
fertile of inventions when one is thrown upon 
one's own resources like this. We have gone 
back to primitive life in more ways than one. 
As a first step, we have fallen quite naturally 
into a system of exchange and barter. I 
worked a profitable transaction this morning 
by bargaining one of my precious cakes of 
soap for a Dutch cheese and a dried fish from 
the Danube. This will feed us for two days, 
if carefully eked out with jam. Our house 
has become a sort of Bureau where the lost 
English congregate and find their relations. 
People wander in and out forlornly at every 
hour of the day, and leave their luggage for 
an hour or so whilst they go and forage for 
food and lodging. Occasionally they repay us 
by bringing back a loaf of bread or a pot of 
native jam which they have had the luck to 
appropriate on their expedition. And then 
we share it, sitting on the floor or on the 
beds. There are no chairs in this house as 
yet ; we have been told that we may get 



no A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

some to-morrow when the owner has had 
time to sort them out from amongst his 
superfluous belongings. Where he and his 
family have taken refuge no one seems to 
know. They must hate us for turning them 
out, but the pill is in truth gilded, for they 
are remarkably well paid for it. Rents are 
quite prohibitive, and people can invite the 
most fantastic prices for the veriest hovels and 
obtain their extortions without question. 

Later. — A dishevelled spectacle of what was 
once a moderately well organised hospital has 
turned up from Bucarest. That is to say that 
the beds, linen and a few of the precious stores 
arrived in separate train-loads convoyed by 
the doctors. All the wounded had to be left 
behind. I was told to return to work, and 
went. 

It was immediately obvious that there was 
urgent need to collect every scrap of material 
existent in this depleted town which could 
possibly be made to serve in the future, and 
so the chief surgeon and I hired a cab which 
held him comfortably and me hardly at all, 
and we asked the prefect to order the driver 
not to desert us under pain of capital punish- 
ment. Thus we sallied forth to probe the 
shopping resources of Jassy. Behind the first 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY in 

counter we were received with upraised hands 
and the announcement that " nothing could 
be bought because nothing remained to sell." 
However, we refused to accept such a de- 
pressing ultimatum, and turned ourselves into 
a combined foraging and requisitioning party. 
We opened drawers and boxes and invaded 
cellars and back rooms, whilst the dumfounded 
shopmen stood by in speechless fury. Honestly, 
I cannot myself understand in retrospect how 
it came about that we were allowed to do as 
we did. But our energy was rewarded. We 
discovered fourteen yards of invaluable rubber 
tubing in a bicycle repair shop, and all the 
catgut we needed in a violin-maker's store. 
It is wonderful what imagination will do for 
one in an emergency ! ! I unearthed 3000 
yards of curious stuffs for miscellaneous use in 
making bandages, compresses and operation 
towels, etc., and my friend the doctor has a 
private machine for rolling the first of these. 
In fact, we collected such a quantity of useful 
things that the packages swamped our little 
cab, and we were obliged to hold up and 
commandeer a passing private motor which, 
luckily, belonged to a generous-minded owner, 
who did not object to taking the things home 
for us. I consider that we had a thoroughly 



ii2 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

successful day, which was unfortunately spoilt, 
from my own point of view, because I fell into 
a hole in one of the sidewalks and became so 
interested in extricating myself that I dropped 
my bag which contained my money and the 
keys of all my trunks. When I discovered 
the loss, I could naturally no longer locate the 
hole. So now the boxes which had not yet 
been unpacked will have to be broken open, 
and that is the last straw ! 

Within the next few days we hope to have 
the hospital in working order again. There 
is cause for gratitude in that the enormous 
quantities of stores which are expected from 
England daily did not arrive when they were 
first hoped for, three or four weeks ago. We 
can now catch them en route for their original 
destination, whereas they would otherwise 
have been lost for ever as far as we are con- 
cerned, though the Germans would have 
benefited hugely thereby. 

The streets are so crowded with Russians 
of every age and denomination that one hardly 
finds the indigenous population, which has 
most wisely retired behind its own locked 
front doors. 

And more Russians pour in quite steadily 
from the north, whilst increasing numbers of 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 113 

refugees flock from the south. It is really 
interesting to find out how many hundreds 
an overcrowded town can hold after it has 
doubly overreached the limit. 

Everything is confusion confounded-— and 
everybody is hungry. 



CHAPTER VIII 

December 191 6. — The situation, from a state 
of things chaotic, but directly traceable, has 
become completely and absolutely obscure. 
An ominous silence broods over us, not a 
telegram has come through for a week, and 
we are in the blackest ignorance of everything 
except Jassy. I have unpacked nothing. For 
all that we know, the Germans may be ad- 
vancing upon us rapidly. This time, evacua- 
tion would mean — just the clothes we stand 
up in, and a few motors ploughing through a 
marsh of mud. For it has begun to snow and 
to rain and to blow angry autumn winds. 
The Russians have occupied this town and 
commandeered the hospitals. Provided that 
they hold at the front, it is the best thing 
that could possibly have happened to us. If 
they don't, it will prove to be the very worst, 
because people don't bother about other 
people when things go wrong. 

The General Staff is established in a village 

well within motoring distance of ourselves, 
114 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 115 

but no news arrives except by hand, and then 
it treats of business only, and business was ever 
discreet. 

As far as our material comfort is concerned, 
we are living in clover compared to what our 
friends are obliged to put up with. Our cook 
has managed to establish communication with 
a farm just outside the town and refuses to 
divulge the address. Her wisdom is proven, 
for ours is the only household where we are 
able to keep up the fiction of regular meals. 
Further, one member of the household gets 
a hot bath in rotation every day. It takes 
several hours to prepare and forms the subject 
of conversation for empty pauses — what it is 
going to feel like, what it did feel like, whether 
A's bath was better than B's, etc., etc. And 
it is difficult not to become pretentious on 
the strength of it. A never-ending stream of 
people of all classes passes through our door, 
the house has become a sort of club — it is the 
only building that manages to look like a 
resting-place in the town, and the cook occa- 
sionally invites strangers to assist at the birth 
of a cake. I have collected six wooden tables 
in the hall. They stand in rows, and every- 
thing happens on them. In fact, one marvels 
at people having worked themselves up over 



n6 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

any further form of furniture. It is so easy 
to point to a table when one is asked : " Where 
is your office, or bed, or cupboard, or kitchen ? " 
and answer : " You'll find it on the big, or 
little, or white, or brown table." 

I discovered that a quondam friend of mine 
had landed with her whole family somewhere 
in our street, and sallied forth yesterday to 
pay a call. Formerly she had owned, and 
cared for, a large country house on the out- 
skirts of Bucarest, where we had often gone 
to dance after dinner. Apparently the fight- 
ing centred there when the Germans arrived, 
and those peasants who ran were shot down. 
She has lost everything ; and I remember 
that, almost as intensely as she loved her 
possessions, she loved her peasants. I came 
home and — the words must be written — retired 
to my room and was violently sick. This after 
training in a hospital of carnage where I haven't 
felt a qualm. Human beings are such funny 
things. She looked so sad when she spoke of 
individual bits of furniture and sketches made 
in her garden that I suddenly recalled all the 
little belongings which I had myself found so 
easy to leave behind and became almost 
hysterical. Really, to leave all that one owns 
is quite disgusting when dissected. Quejais-je 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 117 

dans cette galere ? And now it is whispered 
that we may have to pack and run again, run 
faster, carry less, and 'have further to go. I 
cannot really believe it. Russians keep pour- 
ing through Jassy, not in hundreds but in 
thousands, and, even if they don't fight, their 
bulk will stand between us and the Germans, 
and the latter may only look at them and 
then stand still. 

Even German soldiers, victorious and ad- 
vancing, must eventually be tempted by the 
insidious invitation of that last thought. I 
had pictured actual warfare as enthusiasm, 
glory, heroism, exaltation, what one wills, 
but not as this irresistible craving for rest. 
The very word wakes in one a sort of wonder, 
and one has learnt to comprise therein the 
first childish idea of heaven — a splendid, 
golden sleep. 

Later. — Last night we visited at sunset such 
a scene of horror as can never, and should never, 
be described. A train from Bucarest — the 
last to start — overladen with overweary desti- 
tution, paralysed already at the start with 
poverty, ignorance and fear — from which 
description one can surmise that there were in 
it many women — collided and derailed. Per- 
haps the despair which is born of hopeless 



n8 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

flight communicated itself to an otherwise 
soulless machine — who knows ? — the fact re- 
mains that it hurled itself most thoroughly to 
perdition. No one knows how many hundreds 
died there by the roadside, some in the flames 
of the engine's exploded petrol tank, the 
greater number crushed into one huge form- 
less mass of flesh and horsehair, splintered 
bones and wood. The train had started from 
the capital three whole days before. Family 
groups clustered on the roof of carriages 
whose framework swelled to bursting from 
the crowded turmoil within. Many died 
prematurely from exposure, and the few 
survivors from the final tragedy told night- 
mare stories of children's corpses brushed past 
the carriage windows when the train swept 
under bridges whose height no one had had 
the thought to measure mentally before they 
braved the roof. Such cruelty of negligence 
is inconceivable — and yet the proof that it was 
real was brought home to us who turned from 
the wreckage with averted faces, by the obvious 
indifference of the stunned survivors as to 
whether they were pronounced to be unhurt, 
crippled or dying. Mute misery of pain — we 
have learnt yet one more lesson. The scene 
last night was just a concentrated battle-field 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 119 

which lacked the royalty of cannon and indi- 
vidual heroism to m_aks 01 an open-air slaughter- 
house a splendid place to die. 

There was nothing to be done except to 
collect children who had lost their mothers 
and their dolls, and this we did to double the 
extent of all available accommodation. Russian 
soldiers remained behind with carts of quick- 
lime to bury in a common grave the debris 
of machine and lives. 

I woke this morning to find a message from 
the station-master informing me that a whole 
goods train of Red Cross stores from England 
had arrived during the night, and would any 
one responsible come to the station and fetch 
them ? There is no one responsible, conse- 
quently we have all become so ! I do not 
even know whether the things are the ones we 
ordered from England weeks ago, or whether 
they form part of the enormous quantities of 
Government supplies expected all through 
last summer. 

For the last three or four nights I have had 
four vague Englishmen sleeping on sofas and 
tables, and their presence has been, to say 
the least of it, inconvenient ; but to-day they 
have made themselves very useful. We all 
went to the station en bande, and stood from 



120 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

y'*.™: ill 1 6 in mud U P to our knees trying 
to get the goods off their Russian trucks. 
Here all alike have proved incapable of pro- 
ducing carts or motors. I have seen hundreds 
bumping about — military lorries amongst them 
— carrying officers' pianos and baggage station- 
wards, all private property destined to be 
expedited, together with their wives and 
families, to Russia. The fact remains, how- 
ever, that we were flatly refused motors, and 
one can only blame the state of chaos that 
reigns in every organising department. Finally, 
and in despair, I approached a responsible 
official and demanded some form of transport 
for the stores, however primitive. 

The Queen's private motor-lorry was sug- 
gested and almost materialised, but at the last 
moment was discovered to have gone off into 
the country to fetch fodder for the Palace 
cows. Self-control completely deserted me, 
and I told the important personage who was 
my last hope that I had seen his military motors 
carrying luggage belonging to officers' wives 
to the station whilst his soldiers died. Rhetoric 
prevailed where personal energy had availed 
less than nothing, and my whole party climbed 
into pony carts which appeared from nowhere. 
We bumped off, perched on the top of them, 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 121 

in the direction vaguely indicated as a depot 
for hospital stores provided by the Queen. 
Arrived there, we found it occupied by a Jew 
and his whole prolific family, who looked 
exceedingly comfortable. We went to the 
Chief of Police and to the Palace, we got an 
A.D.C. and some sergeants de ville, and per- 
suaded them to evacuate that Jew and all his 
belongings. Having seen the good work well 
started, we returned to the station and walked 
three-quarters of a mile down the line of rails 
to find the convoy. Trains were pulling in 
and out in all directions without rhyme or 
reason, often they would find themselves face 
to face and resign themselves to a deadlock of 
stoppage. Whistles screamed in dispropor- 
tion to the aimless traffic, and both sides of 
the line were marked with an indescribable 
confusion of gaily painted personal luggage, 
refugees and stores of ammunition. The only 
facts we really and actively noticed were the 
rain and the filth. We enlisted a squad of 
Russian soldiers who looked as if they needed 
occupation, and they helped us willingly and 
with deep respect. I have never understood 
until to-day the amount that hands can 
accomplish. We had to do everything our- 
selves, and actually succeeded in starting a 



122 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

few loaded carts off towards the depot at sun- 
set. The drivers had previously announced 
that they definitely refused to do more than 
one journey to-night, but we got hold of the 
police again before they went home, and 
threatened to search them out and imprison 
them next day if they did not turn up at the 
station by sunrise. 

The irritating part about this whole un- 
speakable confusion is that no one can be 
blamed because no individual is responsible. 
But I must say that we would all feel much 
better to-night if we could vent our simmering 
rage on somebody. Everybody is tired, and 
this house is not a place to rest in ; doors open 
and shut, and people stumble in without 
knocking and take off their boots before they 
start to talk. We have given up trying to 
sweep mud off the floors. 

Later. — Investigation has elicited the fact 
that the Red Cross stores which we so calmly 
appropriated are, in very truth, our own 
property. So now we can sit down with a 
clear conscience, and make of the contents of 
the cases and the stray English doctors and 
nurses who turn up at intervals an efficient 
and well-organised unit for the front. In- 
superable difficulties spring up at every step 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 123 

of the road towards accomplishment ; not the 
least of these was the absolute and desperate 
lack of any form of bed-linen. I have bought 
up all the peasant-women's winter scarves of 
wool, which rival any coat immortalised by 
Joseph, and these are destined for blankets. 
Jassy and its environs are deep in snow, and 
the cold at the front must be dreadful. Our 
own quarters are surprisingly warm, and for 
this we are devoutly thankful, because Rou- 
manian stoves, which look more like organs 
than anything else, are designed more to suit 
Balkan schemes of decoration than solid British 
aspirations towards comfort and warmth. They 
have big organ pipes which reach to the ceil- 
ing, round which the hot air curls, and they 
achieve every known shape and colour. They 
are by no means ugly, but one feels that one 
owns a lot of family tombs, and contemplation 
of their outlines does not make for cheer. 
The few rooms which our house boasts are 
enormous, and all have pale parquet floors 
where one slides about on imitation Aubusson 
carpets. 

As far as any news is concerned, we hear 
only the fantastic stories told by arriving 
refugees. And most of them are disinclined 
to talk of anything but their own immediate 



124 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

physical discomfort and fright. The only 
thing that we definitely know is that the 
Germans are in Bucarest, and that knowledge, 
when one takes a look at the map, is enough 
to be depressing. One thing is satisfactory, 
and that is that there is no longer any 
possibility of further influx into this town. 
All that can happen now is for it to empty 
again slowly. Train-loads leave daily for 
Russia, and we have got to the stage where 
we do not much mind whether they no longer 
arrive so long as they steam away from Jassy. 

There is a good deal of friction between 
the Roumanian and the Russian " Tommies," 
and this is unavoidable, for a strange army 
seldom receives a whole-hearted welcome. 
Russians are so big, and the one thing that is 
obviously tactless at present is to take up even 
the smallest amount of space. I never realised 
a million in visible numbers before. Were 
the units which go to make it here bottles of 
anaesthetic, or blankets, or loaves of bread, or 
something useful, one would be able to admire, 
but one actively resents a surplus when it 
consists of people. 

In a funny way, however, we have settled 
down to being permanently unsettled, and it 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 125 

is a daily surprise to find how comfortably- 
one can manage to exist without anything at 
all. The banks have opened, because the 
bullion from Bucarest got through ; it would 
be interesting to know how that was managed, 
but there is no one to tell us. We take it 
for granted that we are being governed and 
fought for, because there is nothing to prove 
definitely that this is not the case. Still, this 
condition cannot be permanent, and it is 
obvious that some effort will have to be made 
either to organise a settled resting-place, or 
a second flight to a spot so distant that con- 
fusion can turn to order by a process of 
natural evolution. 

Later. — I skipped Xmas Day ; it was too 
horrible. Not a flower, not a gift, not a change 
of any description from the day before or the 
day that followed. We worked hard in the 
morning classifying assets and packing-cases in 
a dark cellar ; the unit is taking shape, and 
arrangements have even been made for it to 
start for the front next week. Visitors and 
officers rushed in and out all day, and the 
Englishmen amongst them whispered, " Plum 
pudding." I had some raisins in a tin, and 
the cook made a mixture with maize and suet 



126 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

and dried grapes which we all shared solemnly 
at dinner " for auld lang syne." Then I went 
to bed and cried myself to sleep. 

I had not thought that we could possibly 
enter into a new phase of horror, but it was 
born on Boxing Day, when the first whispers 
reached us of the destruction of the oil-fields. 
Frankly, we had, each and every one of us, 
completely forgotten the oil ! A man, a 
friend of ours, drove up in a motor, streaked 
with grime, weary and dead to the world. 
After lunch he started to tell his story, fortified 
by a big cigar. 

He had been one of a party who went out 
alone to the petrol city to destroy. No one 
would give them help, and he told us wonder- 
ful accounts of the scenes which he had wit- 
nessed. The first step had been to capture 
every single man and boy who knew anything 
about the petrol plants and deport them 
bodily to Moldavia, so that the Germans 
should find no skilled workmen to brutalise 
to their own profit. And then a few pairs of 
hands sufficed to crumble and lay in ashes 
what many hundred brains had worked to 
build. First they broke up all the machinery 
— the how of the happening is immaterial ; 




A VILLAGE CHAPEL 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 127 

the most primitive and brutal weapons served 
them best. Then they poured benzine from 
the roofs of factories down their walls and set 
them alight, they dug trenches round the vats 
and started blazing channels of flame towards 
the reservoirs. These blew up each in turn, 
and soot and fumes made of what had been 
sunlight an eternal night where the Fire King 
went mad. Town by town saw the destroyers 
come to let hell loose, and factory after fac- 
tory writhed in a death agony of twisted iron 
to send jets of poison fumes after the four 
small flying motor-cars. The devastation left 
by a retreating army lay before them, turmoil 
of an enemy drunk with success stirred in the 
wind-gusts that fed the flames from the south. 
Twice did the destroyers miscalculate the 
time at their disposal, and they were badly 
hurried in one place. The enemy arrived 
sooner than was expected, and there was no 
time to dig the trenches — just one little 
match sufficed to start a burning inunda- 
tion from unskilfully burst vats. Some one 
shouted, "Run/" just before the explosions 
began. 

The man who told us the story ended each 
sentence with the words : " It was the fact 



128 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

that it was daylight — and nevertheless dark, 
which made everything so much worse." 

One can hardly credit the fact that those 
few little men have so effectually accomplished 
what they set out to do that it will be six 
months before the Germans can squeeze a 
drop of petrol from the saturated earth, and 
yet that is what they affirm so quietly that 
one can but accept the statement — and be 
grateful. We are told to-day that a German 
wireless message has been intercepted from 
Berlin which sends the conquerors orders to 
send at once to Germany all the petrol that 
they can manage to expedite. And this has 
reconciled us to the despair which imagina- 
tion taught us to catch in the evening breeze 
to-night when we motored back a little way 
with the teller of the story along the road 
that he had travelled. 

It is part of the general contradiction of 
things that this destruction of the oil-fields, 
which is the most important happening of our 
corner of the war, should remain the one 
which has, locally, at least, made the smallest 
stir. 

Later. — We have suddenly realised to-day 
that we have got back to the frame of mind 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 129 

in which, we spent our last weeks in Bucarest. 
And this is discouraging. In other words, we 
are back in a sort of cul-de-sac which has, 
nevertheless, one small outlet, wofully in- 
adequate, in the shape of that blessed single 
line to Russia. According to all the various 
contradictory information we get, the Germans 
are not going to sit still and are moving 
forward rapidly. 

The only defence that lies between us and 
them is the famous Sereth line, which the 
Roumanians and Russians alike believe to be 
impregnable. But one cannot tell if it is 
going to hold until it has been tested — and if 
it is tested and gives way — why, they will be 
here. That's all ! ! 

The slightest thing that looks like a plan 
hangs fire. One cannot even settle a hospital. 
A Roumanian one which went to the front at 
Roman a short while ago has been recalled to 
Jassy, as the line is too thin on that spot and 
there is no point in risking one of the few 
working units we have got. The authorities 
tell us nothing except that " the situation is 
very serious," and that much, we flatter our- 
selves without conceit, we are quite com- 
petent to understand for ourselves. Galatz 



130 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

has been evacuated, but that in itself means 
little, except that they expect a bombardment 
there ; but if the line is so thin at Roman, 
there is no reason why it should not melt 
away altogether, and then it will be a question 
of another little run wouldn't do us any 
harm. The thing that seems fantastic is that 
it should be taken as such a matter of course 
that " the line should be thin " anywhere. 
The Russians are here, there and everywhere 
in thousands, and all the German prisoners 
we have seen are old men and babies, worn 
out, wretched, ill-clad, and worse fed. Such 
tired troops could be held, turned round and 
chased by anything. 

One likes to feel that there is a solid and 
settled base between oneself and an advancing 
enemy. At present we in Jassy form the base, 
and it is altogether too close for comfort. 

Things have looked brighter for the last 
three or four days, because we have been able 
to get some butter from a family that was 
anxious to exchange for sugar. Sugar we 
obtained from some Roumanian women who 
wanted soap. So my last boxes of English 
soap have vanished, but we have all got to 
the stage where we prefer to be dirty than 
start the day without some pretence at a 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 131 

breakfast. We have learnt many lessons out 
here, but first and foremost amongst them 
stands the one that one can stand anything 
if one's body is comfortable, even sorrow born 
from humiliation of the soul. 



CHAPTER IX 

January 191 7. — Letters from England arrived 
on New Year's Day, and have done much 
towards restoring us to a normal state of 
British phlegm. I must honestly confess that 
these letters, written just at the moment of 
our worst plight when we were flying from 
Bucarest with all known things unpleasant, 
and all things unknown subject for serious 
dread, seem to show an apparent indifference 
to our possible sufferings which has brought 
acute annoyance to us. I think that one 
amongst fifteen newspapers mentioned Rou- 
mania — just that and no more. It made us 
all rather angry at first to realise that we must 
appear so utterly unimportant, but afterwards 
we lost ourselves to all actuality in reading 
the stories of fighting in France. People at 
home are " in a war." Here we can only 
produce a sanguinary melee. 

The situation grows daily more complicated 
and there is every element of trouble. There 
is some friction between the Roumanians and 
132 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 133 

the Russians on every possible point, from 
fighting policy to military etiquette. The 
last question, which has bubbled over, is the 
one as to which of the two nationalities are 
to run the hospitals, the few there are. The 
Russians say that, as they have taken over the 
whole of the front lines and allowed the 
Roumanian army to retire for a well-earned 
spell of rest, there will be no Roumanian 
wounded, and they want all the hospitals 
emptied of their Roumanian staffs and turned 
over, together with all available supplies, to 
the Russian Red Cross. The Roumanians, 
one and all, are naturally wild at the idea and 
definitely decline to comply. So either they 
must be forcibly commandeered or stand empty 
all winter. It is a complete deadlock, and 
one can only hope that feelings of humanity 
will bring them to a compromise. 

Meanwhile we have even been allowed to 
receive reliable news from Bucarest. The 
German administration is apparently allowing 
individuals to leave for Jassy without the 
formality of a passport. This is such a sur- 
prising fact that we credit them with all sorts 
of evil and mysterious motives for what is 
probably only an oversight soon to be rectified. 
The fact remains that a Roumanian officer 



134 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

arrived in Jassy to-day after spending three days 
in Bucarest wearing mufti quite unmolested. 
Apparently he just got on his bicycle when he 
was bored and rode away from the town ! 

He tells us that the new king is proclaimed 
and that all is quiet and well ordered. A 
small army of pro-Germans — we have known 
them well by name and sight for over a year — 
met the German General Staff at the gates 
of the city, and tendered bouquets. It is hard 
not to be instantly furnished with an obvious 
adjective, but it is only fair to insist upon 
the fact that individuals who hold systematic- 
ally to one idea and to one party cannot be 
termed traitors for the simple reason that 
that party may not be one's own. The bearer 
of these tidings travelled on his bicycle all the 
way to Jassy. His descriptions of scenes on 
the road are terrible. So many people who 
left Bucarest on foot during the exodus have 
not yet begun to arrive here, and, according 
to what he told us, few of them ever will. 
He rode through the devastation of the petrol 
cities, and spoilt the quietening information 
that few casualties had resulted there from 
the wholesale destruction by adding : " But 
all the poor, poor people have in their eyes 
the look that lingers from a murdered soul." 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 135 

He drew for us one word-picture of a little 
country cart, where a starving donkey tried to 
cry his need for succour and pleaded mutely 
to be released from the burden of two dead 
women and three children which he continued 
to drag quite slowly because he had been 
" gee'd up " some while before, and had not 
been given leave to rest before they died. 
After that we begged to hear no further 
stories of the road. 

It is possible that the end of this country, 
as far as the Allies are concerned, is very near, 
and we are no longer terrified, only horribly 
depressed. 

As to the things that have happened with 
our own English Red Cross unit, they parry 
description and one can only sit and laugh. 
Insuperable difficulty after insuperable diffi- 
culty rose with the relentless climb of sand- 
hills towards snow mountains. A compatriot 
wants to go home. I cannot say that I blame 
him, but I am extraordinarily sorry for him 
if he tries, because he will not have a nice 
time getting there. I only ask one thing of 
life now — and that not to be obliged to leave 
Jassy and travel along the only route that 
remains until the war is over or things have 
settled down. 



136 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Later. — A Grand Duchess has been to Jassy, 
and has done much, by her charming per- 
sonality and her sympathy, to bring harmony 
into Russo-Roumanian relations. The storm- 
clouds were so very easily dispelled that one 
begins to think that one had exaggerated the 
racial differences. In fact, she was received 
with almost more enthusiasm by the Roumanian 
populace than by her own troops. 

Less important people like ourselves were 
given practical proof of her presence by the 
complete stoppage of all our little luxuries, 
such as firewood and dairy produce. Last 
night for dinner we had soup tablets, boiled 
potatoes and black bread, and there was 
nothing in the house to-day but white beans. 
At this instant, however, we have had untold 
luck, because a friend asked us for a little tea. 
We sent it, and she returned a grateful effusion 
and a pot of jam. I gave an old lady who 
lives opposite some cakes of Pears' soap, some 
aspirine and some pyramidon, which things 
came in the last letter post from home, and 
she returned butter and a plate of ham. Ten 
minutes ago our British soldier visitors drove 
in from a reconnaissance, and unloaded a huge 
dried fish from the Danube and a whole un- 
cooked ham brought from the Russian frontier. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 137 

They themselves had eaten nothing for thirty 
hours, and we are all going to sit down at six 
o'clock and give ourselves up to greed. 

They also had stories to tell which have 
thrown those of the Roumanian officer into 
gloomy shade. In the train which brought 
them to the frontier a soldier had died of 
cholera and lain two days side by side with 
living fellow-travellers. It was nobody's busi- 
ness to remove the corpse, and so it was left 
to lie and jolt with the train. Carts are so 
firmly stuck into the motoring roads that the 
way is blocked, and the only means of passing 
is to overturn the mass and burn the wreckage. 
Two feet of snow cover the whole brown 
earth and make a shroud for victims of ex- 
posure. Both men arrived drowned in water, 
unrecognisable from mud. 

People have begun to speak quite openly of 
the evacuation of Jassy. But this time the 
flight would be organised by Russians, as it 
would be into Russia that we would have to 
go. Rostoff, on the Sea of Azoff, is men- 
tioned as our final haven — and really we 
might do worse. It is quite a nice place. I 
remember it vaguely as a big place with long 
untidy buildings and a broad waterway some- 
where near. The surroundings have only left 



138 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

me with the impression that it was one of 
the few " not quite flat " places that I saw in 
Russia. At least we should be certain of get- 
ting food there — good food ; what's more, 
caviare galore ! and we should be within 
sighting distance of the Further East, which I 
love. I have been advised to change my 
heavy boxes into light ones, if I have any. 
I am saying that I haven't — I really cannot 
subdivide again ! A sort of " specialist evacu- 
ator " has been sent here in the shape of a 
general who has done it before — in Russia. 
So we shall be done slowly this time and 
systematically, and perhaps the results will be 
better. Besides, even the individual learns by 
force of habit, and I am collecting a big suit- 
case full of food, for Azoff sounds very far 
away to me. 

Our latest disturbance is that the owner of 
our house has become restive and is trying to 
turn us out of it. He says that his wife is 
dying from grief at our having it, but I refuse 
to accept the nasty imputation that we are 
doing it any permanent injury. Besides, it 
would take a very long time to dislodge all 
the various sorts and classes of people who 
have made of it a permanent private hotel. 
They are all solid and British, and it will take 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 139 

physical force to move us — a great deal of it. 
We really are full up now. One man spent 
the night on the kitchen stove, which is made 
of mud and flat bricks. He was late in getting 
to bed, because he was worried lest the fire 
should not be quite out. Sheets gave out 
three days ago, and we all lie in strange relics 
of night attire covered to the necks with 
coloured cotton cloths in which peasants were 
wont to carry home market produce. They 
are quite warming, really, considering the 
gossamer of which they are made. We laugh 
all the time, despite the tragedy on every side. 
But it is sympathetic laughter, first cousin to 
real tears. 

Later. — We have been living a wilder rush 
than usual, because all the officers who come 
and spend a night or two here at alternate 
intervals, having gone off definitely in different 
directions for a " long time," chose last night 
in which to turn up, all together, from various 
points of the compass. I had had no idea of 
what a lot of people had really slept in this 
house at intervals until I saw them like that 
all together, and remembered that there was 
literally less than nothing in the kitchen. 
They all wanted baths ; it was obvious that 
each one needed it worse than the last, and 



140 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

our most triumphant effort up to the present 
has been three baths in twenty-four hours. 
They wanted soap — and medicine — and towels 
— and, somehow, they all got them and were 
so nice and grateful. Each one produced a 
different sort of odd contribution to the com- 
munal commissariat, and then, after dinner, 
one of them played music-hall songs, and we 
all felt quite extraordinarily homesick. 

This morning another post arrived from 
England and brought countless small packages 
of tinned food. It came just in time. We 
had had no butter for a week and there was 
hardly any sugar left. Not that any came, 
but we unpacked some jam and remembered 
the pleasant taste of sweetened things. To- 
night we are going to broach a bottle of cham- 
pagne — one of the original three remains. A 
woman — just an ordinary woman — is a very 
useful thing to have about ! I have learnt 
how to mend socks and to make wooden 
buttons, and to pull out the fluff of the selvage 
from stuffs and call it cotton. All kinds of 
people who don't " belong " to us at all leave 
their clothes and their bags in the front hall, 
and every bracket is used for drying linen. 
It's the funniest-looking house I ever pictured, 
even when I was a child and built them 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 141 

under the nursery table. Everybody leaves 
messages for everybody else with whoever 
happens to be there. I have learnt to keep 
a little book with : " Tell So-and-so to com- 
municate with General Staff regarding the 
horse-power of such and such a car." " Tell 

his room is No. 15 at the Continental 

Hotel when he arrives to-morrow." " Here's 
a key for So-and-so — he'll know what it is — 
and see that he gets this sword and returns 
mine to you." " When a Russian officer comes 
to see me, say this and that and the following." 
To-day at 9 a.m. we delivered bandages to 
the British unit, which still survives despite 
vicissitudes ; at 9.30 a new stock of supplies 
had got to be packed and prepared for the 
returning Roman unit ; at eleven an agent 
turned up from Russia to take large orders 
for linen for the hospitals; at 12.30 we 
lunched ; at two a party of French doctors 
came to find out whether we could give them 
any spare surgical instruments ; at 2.30 there 
was a general meeting of the Russian Red 
Cross. At three we all went to the station to 
make sure that the arrangements were all in 
order for the arrival of the Roumanian hos- 
pital unit from Roman ; at four we super- 
intended the delivery of a gift of British 



142 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

stores to the working Roumanian hospital 
which has been lately born at the doors of our 
own depot ; at five we had a farewell tea- 
party to some half-dozen British officers going 
to Bacau ; at six I interviewed three stranded 
English governesses who needed clothes and 
money and information about the Russian 
journey. At 7.30 we dined. And this was 
only an average day. I have not even men- 
tioned the round dozen or so of stray people 
who wandered in between whiles asking for 
things and making suggestions, banging doors, 
and talking every language under the sun ! ! 
One thing never happens here, and that is to 
be bored. 

Later. — Not the wildest flights of imagina- 
tion can picture the things that can happen in 
a country when force of circumstances de- 
moralises the bulk of the population and there 
has not yet been time for the figure-heads to 
find their feet. It is so hard to tabulate, them 
without seeming to throw blame on just those 
people who have really earned our undying 
respect because they are most loyally trying 
to do their best. After all, if London had to 
entrain for Norwich at twenty-four hours' 
notice, I cannot conceive that the transfer 
would be a tidy one ! ! ! 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 143 

Nevertheless, the stories told by our own 
officers and by Russian officials who incessantly 
pass through this house are quite fantastic. 
The " skilled evacuator," otherwise a newly 
arrived Russian general, waited eight hours 
for his train at the frontier, which used to be 
at a bare two hours' train journey from Jassy. 
It subsequently took five, when started, to 
cover the distance. At the station, but out- 
side it, where the train finally came to a com- 
plete standstill, they waited another ninety 
minutes, and then walked, together with the 
crowd of six hundred less important travellers, 
along a free line to the empty Jassy platform. 
It was not even worth while inquiring as to 
the wherefore of the stoppage, because no 
answer could have been given. The station- 
master, as a matter of fact, volunteered that 
he had not known that there were any pas- 
sengers in that train ! Apparently forty cars 
of explosives are resting in Jassy station — 
enough to destroy half the town if they blew 
up sideways. I don't know enough about 
explosives to understand whether this is pos- 
sible, and the uncertainty is rather worrying 
when one sees hundreds of unemployed loung- 
ing there, incessantly smoking cigarettes. 
Another Russian officer told me that he had 



144 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

passed, between Jassy and Bacau, a train-load 
of warm clothes heading towards the front. 
The soldiers in charge were sitting in a de- 
jected row along the embankment chewing 
roots of beetroots which they had found piled 
there in a field. From the look of the ground 
my informant gathered that the party had 
been there a considerable time, and took the 
trouble to stop his own train and inquire why 
there was no engine at either end of the 
other, or, for that matter, in sight. " We 
have slept here for ten days," replied one of 
the soldiers vaguely — the rest did not even 
trouble to listen — " and we have had no food 
since one hundred hours." He added that, 
presumably, they had been forgotten, and that 
one or two of the party had died. 

One of our own officers arrived from Galatz 
on a train which brought wounded to be 
cared for. They had no food for forty-eight 
hours, and many died. At Berlade he had 
ventured away to forage for supplies, and 
actually unearthed some tinned nourishment, 
with which he returned in triumph to the 
train only to find that it had steamed off, five 
minutes before, backwards along the road to 
Galatz which he had just travelled. 

My doctor arrived from Roman, distant an 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 145 

hour's normal train journey. It took him 
twelve, hanging on to an engine together with 
fifty other men. Some dropped off quite 
quietly into the snow-drifts when they grew 
tired. On every skyline, he added, and in 
every valley, they saw horses with broken 
legs, left to die, turning and turning in end- 
less circles of pain, and he heard them scream- 
ing despite the uproar of machinery which 
drowned most hearing. 

In our English hospital there is a man who 
has had his foot amputated. He lay pinned 
under a burning car. A hatchet was brought 
by a doctor to a French officer standing near, 
and the doctor said : " Do it if you can ; I 
have no instruments and feel paralysed." The 
Frenchman did the thing in the whole horror 
of the sunlight, whilst the Russian privates 
who were his charge took advantage of the 
opportunity and pillaged private passenger 
luggage on the train. It did not strike them 
as unworthy ; one must remember that there 
are whole people in the world who have never 
been taught that there is, in theft, dishonour. 

All this time no attempt whatsoever has 
been made to clear away from off the main 
railway line to Bucarest the wreckage of the 
terrible train accident which happened there 



146 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

in days which have faded into the darkest 
ages. But yesterday the idea occurred to a 
party of our British officers to clear it in 
passing, and so they went to the authorities 
and said : " Give us men and engine chains, 
and we will do the rest." These were easily 
procured — human material here is cheap, only 
forethought stands at premium — and the squad 
set off in the middle of the night. At two 
o'clock to-day we remembered that they had 
no food, and so I started off after them in 
my motor laden with tea and a few pork-chops 
and bread. How we reached them, I don't 
know. The going would have been better 
had the road frankly abandoned any effort to 
live up to its pretensions. But when we 
finally arrived, not only did we see a cleared 
track stretching away into the distance, but 
a whole set of new lines was already half laid 
over the ruined gap. Happenings like this 
prove how temptingly easy would be the 
restoration of order into the chaos in which 
we live, which at present seems to grow from 
day to day, just because human nature meets 
failure with easy resignation and requires a 
pointing finger to indicate endurance, which 
in warfare stands for the sublime. 

Later. — I think that it can be definitely 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 147 

assumed now that all danger of our being 
obliged to leave Jassy in the immediate future 
is over. Russians and Roumanians alike are 
standing on the Sereth, and the Germans do 
not seem to be particularly anxious to cross. 
A little success does much to restore balance, 
and we have already voiced the somewhat 
ambitious dream of seeing the enemy driven 
back in the spring. I ask for only one reward 
for all that we are going through, and that to 
drive down behind them in my motor ! It 
would be worth anything to go back like that — 
into our own house. 

Quietly, slowly, nevertheless perceptibly, a 
good deal is being done here to restore order. 
A better feeling has been established between 
the Roumanians and the Russians, and all 
have, at last, realised that they have a common 
enemy and that the personal equation must 
go to the wall. There is splendid stuff in 
both races, but both require more time than 
is conceivable to accomplish anything at all. 
Now, for the first time since war's outbreak, 
we have time to breathe in our little corner 
of the world. 

But disease is coming, and that was a horror 
which we had forgotten. There is a terrible 
shortage of wood, and, in the absence of all 



148 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

other material, fire is the only reliable dis- 
infectant. Lice overrun the hospitals and we 
are unable to combat them, for we have no 
serums and no disinfectants. Petrol, which 
might serve our purpose at a pinch, is also 
lacking now. The doctors are reduced to 
vinegar. I personally still have a small supply 
of regulation stuff left over from amongst the 
things that came out from home, and I have 
hidden it in case of emergency. The state of 
affairs could not declare itself as dangerous 
until the spring, and in two months much 
could be done to combat it. The work has 
been begun, in the only possible way, by 
ordering supplies from home in stupendous 
quantities. But we are met by the same old 
uncertainty as to whether they can ever 
arrive. 

The need will most certainly be very urgent, 
according to the stories we hear already. A 
Roumanian nurse came to me straight from 
the firing line at Tekutch and said : " Can 
you tell me where to go for help ? The living 
where I come from refuse to bury the dead 
for fear of contagion, and the dogs are eating 
the bodies. I've seen a room where forty 
men die of typhus and scarlet fever together, 
and no one will go near them. The day I 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 149 

left, I managed to get a Roumanian officer to 
bring some straw, and I spread it near them 
with my own hands." 

She did not exaggerate. My friend the 
surgeon tells me that we are in for a terrible 
time if something is not done at once. And 
the head of the bacteriological hospital has 
submitted the following : " If one quarter of 
the new army is not at once sent out of the 
country into cleanliness, that army will be 
gone before the autumn." 

Our own hospital already has over three 
hundred infectious cases, all different diseases. 
Yet we cannot refuse to take in dying men. 
Our nurses are being simply splendid. I refer 
to the original party that came out with the 
first hospital unit from home. All this time 
they have not had so much as a chair to sit 
in, or a sofa, only a bed apiece and a Red 
Cross case for a table. And they never told. 
One of them has recently come back from 
Roman, where she worked with the Roumanian 
hospital. She brought a photo of the morgue, 
where seventy dead bodies had lain for a fort- 
night, unattended. She counted over fifty 
disabled engines stranded on the line between 
Roman and Jassy ; it is impossible to mend 
them, because they were originally German. 



150 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

The wounded, who are sent down in parties 
of twenty and thirty to be attended to here, 
are forced to wait for days at every siding, to 
leave the road clear for train-loads of petrol- 
plant machinery needed urgently at Bacau. 
They arrive dazed and nearly dying, and go 
to sleep in our hospital and don't wake up 
for two days sometimes. One man to whom 
I gave a whole loaf of bread hugged it to his 
chest as a precious thing. That fact he could 
still recognise, but he seemed to have for- 
gotten how to eat. A great many of our cases 
are typhoid, and we have little or no milk to 
give, so they just die. 

The suffering which is endured so uncom- 
plainingly seems so utterly out of proportion 
to what these splendid fellows have deserved. 
I said to one the other day, a man who had 
lost two legs and an arm and only kept his 
reason by a miracle : " What Roumania needs 
is just one victory to give you courage " ; and 
he answered me very low : " What my country 
needs, madame, is quicklime in quantities, so 
as to bury her dead decently and clean." 



CHAPTER X 

February 191 7. — The house has been really- 
quiet for ten days — all our visitors are away, 
most of them at the front. And for this we 
have cause to be devoutly thankful, as the 
food shortage has become acute and we are 
told that, unless the railways tumble into 
working order within the very near future, 
starvation is certain. Nowadays we only get 
meat, in very small quantities, twice a week, 
officially distributed by the Government. 
Apart from that, we eat bread and the few 
little luxuries which come to us as a sign of 
Heaven's special favour every now and then. 
The small quantities of milk, butter and eggs 
available are naturally reserved for the hospitals. 
The situation is undoubtedly very serious. We 
are still plunged in mid-winter, with feet of 
snow on the ground, and all are suffering 
from a very virulent form of influenza ushered 
in with incredible temperatures. 

German propaganda is making itself felt in 
the town, and their spies abound. Some 
151 



152 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Roumanian military prisoners were recently 
liberated, and returned to their base furnished 
with illuminated leaflets advertising German 
supremacy and Roumania's ruin. These were, 
however, loyally handed over to their officers. 

The deaths from starvation amongst the 
peasant population of the country are terrible. 
Men crawl in to the outskirts of Jassy, having 
staggered for twenty or thirty miles in the 
hope of dragging themselves home again with 
a little food for their babies. 

Travelling conditions are indescribable. One 
of our newspaper correspondents had to get 
to the front. He started off in a motor with 
one friend, with a second motor following — 
nowadays one never tries to reach anything in 
one. The cars had orders not to lose sight of 
each other, but a blizzard came between them. 
The front one was snowed up at midnight, 
and the two men gave themselves up for lost, 
as they had eaten all their food and drunk the 
brandy. But, fortunately, a regiment of 
Cossacks passed and lent them horses. They 
foraged about in the snow for two hours and 
then had the luck to find the other motor. 
They restarted and reached a village outside 
their destination, where their engine froze. 
Undaunted, they commandeered six oxen and 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 153 

hitched them to a sled, in which conveyance 
they finally rolled triumphantly into Bacau, 
after having spent sixteen hours in covering 
the remaining eight miles. These are the 
conditions under which we have to keep the 
few hospitals running near the front lines 
supplied with everything which we have not, 
as a preliminary difficulty, got ! ! ! ! 

Now we have been told that, as soon as the 
weather grows warm again, we shall have air 
raids. One came to Berlade last week, and 
the French brought down two machines, one 
with anti-aircraft guns and the other with one 
of their own aeroplanes. Here we have no 
defences at all, and these houses of packed 
humanity will crumble into a bloody pool at 
the base of the hills. They have neither 
cellar nor second storey, so one will have no 
choice of action, except to stand still in what- 
ever place one may happen to be and trust to 
luck. 

These are the little reflections which are 
born during moments of rest and quiet con- 
templation of the situation. But they come 
seldom. Apart from them so much is visibly 
being done to restore a semblance of order 
that we have become quite cheerful. There 
is a whisper of spring in the air, though it is 



154 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

still very cold, and we have begun to work in 
the garden. Hitherto we had not had time 
to appreciate its possibilities. After all, we 
have been in Jassy barely two months, and, 
although it is easy to paint a picture of in- 
describable confusion, it is, in another way, 
marvellous to realise how comparatively com- 
fortable we have managed to settle down. 
By this time most of our friends are installed 
with some pretence at permanency, and a 
half-hearted attempt at sociability is begin- 
ning to make itself felt. They are amusing 
to the point of pathos, these little lunches and 
dinners where we scrape the inadequate cover- 
ings of the plates set before us, and converse 
volubly and in an interminable circle about 
our own unimportant little affairs. There is 
danger of becoming entirely self-centred and 
of boiling everything down to the personal 
equation, because we get no books and hardly 
any papers, and the few mails that reach us 
from Russia are ages old. 

Clothes have become a serious considera- 
tion. I have often, in the past, spoken of my 
belongings as " worn out," but I never knew 
before how odd things could look when they 
are in actual fact worn through. Things like 
powder and nail-cleaners are myths only. For 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 155 

the former I use ground rice and for the latter 
hairpins, and I see myself, in the near future, 
reduced to wearing soldiers' military boots. 
It has been brought home to us women how 
utterly absurd is fashion. The pretty ones 
look the lovelier for the fact that they can 
manage to look nice at all, but all these 
attributes fade to nothing before the quality 
of usefulness. 

Later. — The military lull has brought oppor- 
tunities for airing political squabbles dormant 
in all small countries. Something is in the 
air, and it has affected, curiously enough, 
chiefly the Russian soldiers. They appear 
restive, and talk in groups with an excitement 
disproportionate to the quiet of this interval. 
We hear the most fantastic rumours, but have 
learnt, from bitter experience, to discredit 
anything that savours of on dit. Nothing can 
be very seriously wrong, because order has 
come to the railways and the danger of starva- 
tion has been reduced to minimum. Most of 
our supplies come from Odessa nowadays, and 
our staple diet is based on the big pale pink 
Russian hams which we used to consider so 
delicious in far-off Bucarest days. Now we 
view the insipid contours with acute loathing 
and merely eat to live. 



156 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Now that the trains are running slowly but 
regularly, we have received some Red Cross 
stores and consignments of disinfectant. The 
first step was to purge the hospitals, and this 
has been most thoroughly accomplished. Some 
of the buildings had to be burnt ; it was the 
only way to exterminate the lice. Most of 
the minor diseases have been appreciably 
checked, and cholera and typhus are our 
worst enemies. There is still time to accom- 
plish a good deal before the summer, but the 
danger will not be over, for I believe that 
typhus lies dormant in hot weather and wakes 
to life when winter comes. 

Our papers make rather depressing reading. 
We realise that we cannot hope to hold the 
world-stage — but still, the limelight of the 
times avoids our little corner most conspicu- 
ously, and it is rather irritating. One does 
not mind labelling one's own self as the least 
of little things, but one hates having the fact 
rubbed in by being completely ignored. 

March 191 7. — The Russian coup d'Hat has 
come and the Government here is having 
some anxious moments. It is unlikely, how- 
ever, that anything serious will transpire. 
The Royal Family is very popular and is 
faithfully served by the administration. All 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 157 

Russians, of course, are in a ferment, but it 
is reassuring to notice that they have not lost 
sight of the common ideals of the war. 

Telegraphic news from America is palpi- 
tating, and brings the end of the war within 
sight, at any rate, of our own generation. 
Unfortunately everything worth doing takes 
an immense amount of time in this world, 
and one cannot hope for things to begin to 
happen for a long time. It is rather dis- 
couraging that the crisis in Russia should have 
come to a head at this moment, speaking, 
naturally, from our own point of view, which 
is the only one that appears, through force of 
circumstances, important. The Roumanians 
and Russians were just learning to stand up 
to their three-legged race, and now all the 
knots have had to be loosened to give the 
latter a chance to stretch cramped knees. We 
had begun to talk of a big spring offensive, 
and now the only thing that is obvious is that 
waiting will be our indefinite lot. 

Our biggest social function lately has been 
a triple funeral of society victims to typhus. 
The toll amongst the French doctors is heavy, 
and there are deaths every day. I went 
yesterday to inspect a new barrack at the 
station which has been recently built to 



158 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

replace our hospital, which was one of the 
many to be burnt so as to attain purification. 
I had never seen lice close by before, and was 
surprised to find them so small. The horror 
of the word had made me think they were big 
things. All that I saw were dead, and the 
fact that they obtrude themselves upon my 
notice is sufficient proof of the quantity I 
saw. The new patients were lying, one hun- 
dred and fifty in number, on the ground near 
the building. They were waiting for a bath 
and a shave, and will lie there, some of them, 
for a day or two until they can be attended 
to. The head of the hospital is preparing a 
bathing train for them, but it will not be 
ready for another ten days. The actual 
number of typhus cases is abating, but the 
disease — what there is of it — has taken a highly 
virulent form, and few of the tainted recover. 
People one knows go down with it every day, 
and whether one will succumb oneself is purely 
a matter of chance. 

As I write, a little black lamb which was 
sold to us two days ago, and which has been 
put into the garden to fatten, has begun to 
" ma-a-a-a-a " most miserably. It's fantastic 
how anything young that won't stay alone 
because it's bored can make life unpleasant to 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 159 

much bigger things around it ! I never knew 
that lambs had intelligence, character and per- 
sonality. This one just wants company, and its 
" ma-a-a-s " are in every tone till they reach 
an angry squeal, more like the voice of a child 
than anything animal I ever heard. I have 
had to have it taken away. It planted its 
forefeet against the wall of the house when 
it discovered my window above its head, and 
bleated up. I ask any one : Is that the 
universal idea of a lamb ? The servants had 
put a pink ribbon round its neck, and are 
now completely staggered because I have just 
informed them that I, at any rate, decline to 
eat it. We were adopted, about two months 
ago, by a wretched, sneaky-looking little cur, 
now a magnificent long-haired sheep-dog. He 
is a capital watchman, who lords himself all over 
the place and has a nasty, overbearing nature. 
A second small starved dog adopted us yester- 
day and was fed. Now it has betaken itself 
to the farthest corner of the property and is 
cringing in fear by the watch-dog, too hungry 
to leave and yet too frightened to move. It 
lies in the sun with one eye open, having had 
several serious bites, but remembers " good 
dinner " and won't go. I fear, however, that 
it will give up and crawl away and die. 



160 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

Later. — The war situation has come to a 
complete standstill : it is hard to believe that 
anything more can ever happen here. 

Seven hundred thousand Russians are said 
to be on our front, who could, undoubtedly, 
just sweep across the country, driving all 
before them, and lead us back into Bucarest. 
But their very numbers make them a difficult 
army to equip and feed. At present they 
lack munitions, fodder, guns and railways, so 
it all looks pretty hopeless, and one can but 
be thankful for them as a definite solid buffer 
which will require a lot of moving. There 
are very few enemy divisions in front of 
them, and we are told that these consist 
principally of Turks and Bulgarians. It makes 
one rather ill to think how easy complete 
victory could be and how unlikely it is. 

Social events in the shape of funerals follow 
one another with depressing rapidity. To- 
morrow six victims are to be buried at once. 
They comprise the best Roumanian typhus 
expert, the nurse who looked after the last 
French doctor to die, a sister of charity, a 
colonel and two young officers. Amidst these 
sunny, warm surroundings it is hard to realise 
death. I went to the station barrack again 
to-day. More than a fortnight had passed 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 161 

since my last visit, but the sick and wounded 
still lay in the open awaiting their turn. 
All the hospitals are overcrowded with sick- 
ness ; there are few wounds, because there 
has been stagnation on all fronts. We have 
divorced one of the big English doctors 
from his regulation work for a month, and 
asked him to take responsible steps to combat 
disease. He has started by composing a 
train of oil-tanks for disinfecting clothes, 
and is completing the half-finished train for 
giving the soldiers baths and a shave. He 
tells me that, at present, nearly all the 
infected die simply for want of the necessary 
foodstuffs and serums. It will be the purest 
luck if none of us get it, because we have, 
naturally, no more efficacious safeguards than 
any one else. The little we did have was 
distributed centuries ago. Bordering as we 
do upon the East, we are subject to Eastern 
meteorology and have had no spring. The 
big thaw came quite suddenly, and hot dust 
winds from the south did much to dry the 
resulting quagmire. Whether the dust is pre- 
ferable to mud remains to be seen : mud 
breeds disease and dust is a reliable carrier. 
With both following so close on one another's 
heels, we should do well ! 

M 



i6z A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

What is so desperately depressing is this 
gradual fading away of an army which has 
had little or no fighting to make death worth 
while. 

All through this time of waiting our thoughts 
turn sentimentally towards England with such 
abandon that we are deserving of ridicule. 
Newspapers reach us now, and they are not 
too old. I suppose that it is only we exiles 
who can properly appreciate the contradiction 
of the entertainment column side by side with 
the one that records the toll of the trenches. 
I saw a fashion sheet the other day, and 
realised that there was still charm in clothes. 
And all the women in the picture papers look 
like angels paying a visit to the earth. One 
does hope that England will make an effort 
not to change too much before we see her 
again. This sounds selfish, but it is the 
truest expression of patriotism of which this 
particular little band of exiles is capable. 
We read in the papers that many women go 
on out to dine in day clothes after their work. 
To us this appears incredible — that there 
should be human beings in the world who 
have the chance to put on different clothes 
and who do not realise the wonderful blessing 
of being able to feel clean. We have for- 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 163 

gotten what it was like. We have even for- 
gotten what it felt like to eat food that tasted 
clean and had a flavour of anything at all. 
One welcomes the curious " tinny " taste of 
preserved stuffs simply because one knows that 
they were packed in pleasant surroundings 
and grew in healthy earth. All the things 
one frankly hated before taste good, like 
tomato soup tablets or tinned sardines. Be- 
sides this we have macaroni and occasional 
snipe. These are very fishy in odour and 
taste, but quite remarkably delicious. 

In the Roumanian typhus hospital, which 
we were invited to inspect a few days ago, 
they are allowed four bottles of milk per day 
for a hundred cases which can be nourished 
on nothing else. In the first ward men and 
women sleep together, separated by screens. 
Two officers had been very bad, but the 
hospital was proud of them and showed them 
off because they were recovering. Opposite 
them lay two infirmieres ; one was dead and 
the other dying. There they would lie until 
their turn came round for a funeral. Up to 
the present not an English person has gone 
down with a disease. We take a lot of care 
of ourselves — wash our teeth several times a 
day with brandy and rub our nostrils with 



1 64 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

the stuff — and we have the luck to be able to 
superintend our own cooking and washing. 
Now that the weather is fine, this kind of 
thing happens in the garden for the sake of 
safety, and it is funny to see damp strings of 
macaroni and the family underclothes sus- 
pended from the same rope, stretched across 
the branches of pine trees at whose roots 
bloom lilies-of-the-valley. 

Curious how one grows accustomed to 
things. Conditions here are fundamentally 
unchanged since the first fortnight of our 
arrival, and one and all have come to consider 
them as perfectly natural. 

Next month we are going to be lucky enough 
to be allowed to visit the Russian front. 
Nominally we shall be called " an inspection 
of the hospitals," but I fancy that the Russian 
and Roumanian authorities alike are rather 
proud of what they have done, and are anxious 
for outsiders to see and judge for themselves. 
The trip will take two or three days ; we shall 
go by motor, of course, and shall arrive, like 
Father Christmas, grown scornful of the 
calendar, laden with every form of luxury. 
I think that cigarettes, magazines, cheap 
Russian sweets and cotton-wool can, without 
exaggeration, be termed luxury nowadays. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 165 

We are told that the road which we shall 
travel is like a fairy pathway of spring scents 
and flowers. It is splendid to have some- 
thing to look forward to at last, because cer- 
tainly all that we find in memory to feed 
upon steeps us in gloom. Nor is the present 
particularly exhilarating ! 



CHAPTER XI 

April 191 7. — We have returned from our 
expedition, and into no three days of any one 
of our separate existences have we crammed 
such interest. 

We started by averaging forty kilometres an 
hour for seven hours over things deserving of 
any name but roads. The two cars were 
seventy-five horse-power, and at times we 
ran ten or twenty miles at eighty. I per- 
sonally was obliged to double up and cling 
to the seat in front of me, having had the 
misfortune to grow only small and light. 
Quite frankly, I was terrified of bumping out. 
It was a jaw-shattering experience into which 
nerves could not even enter, for they died 
before they were born. The road of tree- 
branches looked like corduroy at times, at 
others like the board for a game played at 
Early Victorian charity bazaars where one 
pulled a trigger and a little wooden ball 
made for a field of smooth cup-like holes. 

These were the mud ponds that marked the 
166 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 167 

passage of munition wagons in the winter, 
and which had not had time to dry. The 
filth which splashed when we took them at 
full speed obliterated the sunlight and mixed 
a curious colour with the blueness of the sky. 
The road grew better as we neared Roman. 
Roumanians and Russians have rebuilt it 
entirely, and done their work extraordinarily 
well. All the bridges were new, and damp 
mortar oozed from the brick spaces. The 
country there is almost the loveliest in Rou- 
mania, like Sinaia, but unspoilt by Swiss 
cottage decoration. After we had been skating 
round the horrible curves for an hour or so, 
I began to be able to see things, and felt as 
if I were in a high-class cinema at home. 
We met all the things pictured in illustrated 
papers like the Graphic or the London News. 
We must have passed 10,000 tethered horses 
camped under trees, with their supply wagons 
all interlaced with branches so as to hide them 
from enemy observers. And all the photo- 
graphs which one remembered of wisps of 
smoke, resting men, and rifles leaning three- 
legged against one another suddenly took 
shape, threw shadows, and had meaning. As 
we neared the front the piles of munitions 
grew to mountains and we passed miles and 



1 68 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

miles of wire entanglements, up and down 
hills with loopholed crests. We saw trenches 
where we expected to find cowsheds, and 
cowsheds in the places where trenches ob- 
viously ought to have been. Great stationary- 
kitchens, where stained canvas tents sent forth 
surprisingly appetising whiffs spread them- 
selves straight across the road at regular 
intervals, and streams of carts laden with 
bread headed away from them in all directions 
of the compass. We got mixed up at times 
with the stragglers of regiments on the march, 
and we watched the field kitchens actually 
distributing soup and picking up bread as 
they moved forwards so as not to waste time 
whilst soldiers fed. Most of the things that 
happened took place in peaceful meadows near 
streams which cuddled into wild flowered 
nooks to cool the almost summer heat. We 
pushed forward to within two miles of the 
front-line trenches, and watched shells burst- 
ing in the air over a ridge of hills that split 
two wooded valleys. And then, towards sun- 
set, we met double pony-stretchers bringing 
back the wounded from the first field-dressing 
station, and at this point distinguished the 
rattle of the muskets when we left the car to 
climb a little way up the hillside on foot. 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 169 

A Russian aide-de-camp met us to point 
out our quarters, which turned out to be 
prepared for us in one of the little white 
rest-houses, lately built, which had fronted 
the last mile of roadway. Russian Easter- 
time was just over, and each was festooned 
inside under the rafters with branches of pine 
wood, and clusters of fresh golden cones that 
hung like chandeliers. Those which sheltered 
the General and Medical Staffs were marked 
with flags and red crosses respectively; the 
others, where soldiers were billeted, had the 
numbers of the units picked out in black 
relief over the wooden doors. The beds in 
these rest-houses were as clean and white as 
those in a country house in England, and we 
found the luxury of a clean towel hanging 
from a nail at the foot of each. Original 
tree-stumps had been left to pierce the floor 
as tables, and roughly baked ovens made of 
mud formed queer-shaped stoves. Everything 
inside was permeated with the clean fresh 
smell of newly felled pines. 

I never saw anything so simple, clean and 
business-like in all my life. A capital little 
hospital built of white planks stands at a 
turning of the main street of this emergency 
village. It is hemmed in by a graveyard, 



170 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

where white crosses mark the last sleeping- 
place of those Russian soldiers who can never 
return except in spirit to their homes. Russian 
Red Cross nurses work here, ladies all. The 
one who cooked our meals, a girl of eighteen, 
was the daughter of the Chief of the Staff of 
one of the big generals, taking her month's 
duty in the kitchen, as must all in turn. The 
others were mostly wives of generals. The 
hospital sends out light ambulances and horse 
stretchers to the front-line trenches in the 
hills at regular intervals and to appointed 
places. A nurse and a doctor invariably 
accompany them on foot. The work is very 
light just now, as there has been no heavy 
fighting, only occasional firing. The hospital 
was practically empty, but the five men who 
lay there were all dying, three of tetanus and 
two of meningitis. A train service has been 
instituted between these base hospitals and 
the big convalescent camps at Odessa, and 
seems to be running marvellously well. 

We received a cheerful welcome from all : 
from the sun-burned nurses dressed in white 
to the wild-looking soldiers in smoke-coloured 
cloth who sported love-locks and great shaggy 
beards. Little tossing trout streams freshened 
the air, and the black smoke-clouds of burst- 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 171 

ing shells added to the artistic effects. Only 
the wounded seemed out of place, and there 
were very few of those. 

We feasted royally in the officers' mess, and 
toasted one another in purple vodka which 
was pure alcohol ; there is nothing else left. 
A doctor arrived from Odessa just in time for 
dessert, and brought a box of sweets and the 
latest French books. Afterwards we turned 
in and slept most royally, more care-free than 
we had lain for many weeks. 

At sunrise we were accompanied on a tour 
of inspection, and not even a hidden garbage- 
heap obtruded to spoil the wonderful atmo- 
sphere of a clean sunlit world. Even the pony- 
stretchers managed to look cheerful, because 
the beasts are covered with white sheepskins, 
and all the sheets, blankets and pillow-cases 
were not only white, but clean. All harness 
gleamed and jingled, the carts were solid, and 
the canvas coverings new. Those soldiers 
who filed away past us towards the distance 
and the firing line sang harmoniously in 
cadences, and their officers drove with them 
in shining little victorias where even the 
varnish was undimmed. A priest accom- 
panies all units, and marches either with the 
men, or leads the head of the column on 



172 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

horseback side by side with the general or 
chief commanding officer. 

I felt almost shy of distributing the little 
presents which had been prepared with such 
infinite care far away in the turmoil of Jassy, 
but those nice men gave uncouth shouts, 
which were much more expressive than 
mumbled thanks when I gave the cigarettes. 
They are, one and all, just like overgrown 
children, and have the smile of little babies 
at the lined corners of their eyes. Roumania 
will certainly be left with a legacy of fair, 
blue-eyed children ; the idylls obtruded pleas- 
antly wherever we had the indiscretion to 
wander. But the Russians are a splendid 
race, and their blood can but strengthen and 
invigorate a Latin and often gipsy strain. 

Alas ! the return journey, which traced for 
us yet another road, cast some shadows over 
the brightness of all we had found to praise. 
There has been time enough to trim and 
polish only the fringes of such an army, and, 
gradually, things turned from white to grey, 
then back to brown. We passed through 
deserted villages where decayed carcases of 
beasts had stained the road. Their streets 
were piled in pyramids where the snow had 
but half melted from the mud-heaps, and 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 173 

refuse strewed the whole country-side. Those 
troops we met aped travelling gipsies ; their 
creaking carts dangled pots and pans from 
harness ropes and torn canvas covers. All 
uniforms were rain-washed and tattered brown 
and blue. Then would come a cluster of 
hovels, heralded by a sign-post : " No troops 
are to be billeted here " ; some one would 
whisper : " Typhus — infection," and we would 
whirl onwards, leaving in the dust clouds a 
sad loneliness of mud, lean beasts, and children 
aged before their time who never raised their 
sunken eyes to stare. 

The trip had lasted just seventy hours, yet 
we felt that all the surroundings of Jassy 
ought by rights to have changed completely 
for our return. We were completely dis- 
illusioned. 

Later. — There has been a mild Cabinet 
crisis while we were away, on the questions of 
private and Government property and the 
future of Roumanian peasants after the war. 
But the Government still stands firm. 

A good deal of revolutionary disaffection is 
making itself felt amongst the Russian troops 
in Jassy, who have nothing to do. The 
officers are rather in awe of their men, who 
seem to have a gentle upper hand in the 



174 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

management of their own affairs. Every 
division, battalion, company, etc., has its own 
committee of soldiers, which cuts it off from 
all pretence of military discipline as we know 
it, but which manages, nevertheless, to keep 
admirable order. Unfortunately it is rather 
obvious that the only thing which they actively 
desire is a peace that would allow them to 
return to their own homes and put their own 
country in order. Red flags wave all over the 
town, and there have been mass meetings 
advertised with pamphlets announcing that : 
" We want peace without confiscation of terri- 
tories and without war indemnities." All this 
is disturbing ; not that it in any way alters 
the course of the war, but it cannot help 
lengthening the struggle. I am afraid that 
there is little hope now of a big spring offen- 
sive. Of course the optimists amongst us 
maintain that this is nothing but froth at the 
top of the bottle and that there is good wine 
underneath. Certainly the men, who, after 
all, could do as they liked with this town, are 
very tractable. They sang hymns as they 
marched towards the public square where the 
meetings were held, and were not even a 
little drunk. We hear that they invited the 
French soldiers to come, and that a non- 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 175 

commissioned officer who was " all there " 
replied : " We should be delighted to attend, 
but, unless you get us leave from our officers, 
shall not be able to do so, as it would be 
against the regulations. We hope, however, 
that you will make the request." Needless 
to say, the Russians took the hint and didn't. 
The Russian privates took a red cockade to 
their general in command, and said : " We 
know you won't wear it, but we bring it as a 
sign of our friendship." He replied : " You 
are quite wrong. I will wear it on the day 
when we can speak of Victory." Oh dear ! 
If I were a Russian general now, what a big 
man I should be. I'd pin a red cockade to 
every officer's tunic and tie a scarlet sash 
round my own, and say to my men : " You 
are in the right. We join you — now lead on 
and fight to win." They are such children, 
these big, gentle, hairy men, easily led and 
most impossibly driven. 

The shadow of disease is lifting a little. 
Practical advantage has been taken of this 
interval of inanition, and large quantities of 
necessary stores arrive daily from Russia. 
And the food difficulty has become insignifi- 
cant. The town is no longer trebly over- 
crowded — just very full. A great number of 



176 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

private enterprises for the relief of the country- 
population have sprung into being. These 
work along orderly systems, and are not too 
exaggeratedly lacking in funds. All things 
official are naturally reserved for the Red 
Cross, which is now efficiently organised. All 
that the country needs is time and material : 
capabilities and a moderate enthusiasm are 
decidedly here, but have not had a fair chance 
of demonstrating hitherto. Every eye is fixed 
on Russia, because the only thing that we 
know for certain is, that whatever waves flood 
our northern ally will engulf us too. I 
personally have such a profound confidence 
in all things Russian, now that I have seen with 
my own eyes what they are capable of accom- 
plishing, that I refuse to entertain the sup- 
position that they can diverge towards wrong 
channels. But they are not made of stuff 
that can be influenced by harrying. 

Later. — We have had another unexpected 
treat in the shape of a second visit of inspec- 
tion — this time to the British and French 
Red Cross Hospitals near the firing line. Our 
own was simply splendid. It is the unit 
which has received the largest amount of 
English stores, and a great many of the appen- 
dages were of stereotyped pattern. Never- 



-■ "1 





A ROUMANIAN DIARY 177 

theless, we marvelled at the ingenuity displayed 
in supplementing those things which were 
unavoidably lacking. We saw the whole system 
at work in low wooden buildings painted 
white. All the furniture was home-made and 
enamelled ; there were even screens which 
folded tidily and sported a big Maltese Cross 
on the opening panel. White walls were 
finished with a dado of Roumanian colours, 
and matched benches and beds of smooth 
white wood. The blankets of soft British 
wool were folded so as to leave uppermost 
the quiet Red Cross of St. John. The whole 
staff is English, and is worshipped by the 
men. At Eastertime the latter bribed the 
night watchman to smuggle in Easter greens, 
and the nurses woke to find their dining- 
room wreathed on Easter morning and a tree 
on the breakfast-table, where swung a heart- 
shaped pendant of fresh violets. The surgeons 
received a telegram of " Heartfelt gratitude 
for the kindness shown to us Roumanian 
soldiers." 

We saw the convalescents planting seeds of 
flowers and vegetables out of doors, and 
noticed that all wore wooden sandals made 
by their own artisans. In every other hos- 
pital the men go barefoot. They have built 



178 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

a pigsty and a cowshed, because one of the 
nurses is a farmer's daughter and competent 
to care for livestock. The staff goes out and 
raids the country at intervals in the St. John's 
ambulance car for food that runs. I never 
met a nicer, happier spirit in any place where 
people have suffered. The two English sur- 
geons live in a big private house belonging to 
an old lady, who feels that Heaven has sent 
her two nice big sons and who adores them 
both. They are very good to her, and take 
it in turns to sit up late at night and talk to 
her, as they have discovered that she loves it. 
She is very rich, and has developed a pro- 
prietary interest in the whole hospital, and 
keeps it supplied with little luxuries. 

The country on every side was pasture-land, 
and the background of all we saw was emerald 
green. 

Later. — We are going through another local 
crisis, this time a violent attack on the Govern- 
ment. It is idle to speculate upon what 
would happen here if it went out. That the 
control should be forcibly upset again, just 
when it has really taken hold and is doing well, 
would be a disastrous pity. After all, what 
does it matter who governs a country so long 
as the country improves and thrives more 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 179 

visibly every day ? The restoration of order 
that has come to pass has been so imper- 
ceptibly born that it is only in quiet moments, 
when one has an opportunity to visualise 
things as they were a few short weeks ago, 
that one can appreciate the stupendous amount 
that has been accomplished. When solid 
foundations have been laid it would appear 
sheer lunacy to hunt out a new building site. 
Patriotism has always existed here, and self- 
confidence is just coming. Successful action 
will be the fruit of both if things are left to 
work out their own salvation. At a big 
military review the other day, a small boy of 
six, dressed in full military uniform, was 
hoisted on to a table and delivered a patriotic 
speech to the assembled crowd of soldiers, 
officers and generals. The finish was curiously 
Eastern : one remembers how a slight boyish 
figure, drowned in blood, wails a falsetto 
introduction to the Passion Plays of Persia 
and Turkey before the martyrdom of Hussein 
and Hassan is portrayed on the stage. The 
enthusiasm here was quite as flaming as one 
had ever felt it in the countries of Mahommed, 
and some of the soldiers cried. The idea is 
but the crudest principle of nature. Man 
has ever been stirred by woman, and nothing 



180 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

can move a woman so spontaneously as a 
child. 

This whole city gives the impression of 
having started now to work in earnest. We 
are quietly, reasonably and systematically pre- 
paring for war. And it is dull work. These 
political agitations are purely the result of 
inaction upon awakened minds. Had we 
ammunition now and the original enthusiasm 
for conquest, I am certain that the Germans 
would be scattered out of Wallachia like chaff 
before the wind. Existing circumstances are 
so wonderfully comfortable compared to all 
that we survived in the winter that we stand 
in great danger of becoming too contented to 
move again before the war is over. Indi- 
viduals feel it themselves. We women have 
no work to do, and the inaction is paralysing. 
I laze all day in a spring-time garden where 
birds twitter and crickets sing. Then I go 
to bed and sleep badly because I overslept 
all day. Every now and then a busy morn- 
ing threatens when trains of Red Cross material 
steam in from Russia. But an organising 
presence has become almost superfluous. 
There is transport galore, and all the sub- 
ordinates know their business. 

We indulge in occasional motor picnics 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 181 

outside the town, and have noticed that the 
peasants are gradually losing their hunted 
look and are beginning to fill their rags of 
clothes. This is thanks to the good and 
efficient work done quietly by the relief 
commissions. 

It is hard to decide whether it is the 
warmth and sunshine which has given us such 
semblance of settled peace, or whether only a 
little order, a little time and a few skilled 
workmen would have assured it to us straight 
on from the beginning. 



CHAPTER XII 

May 191 7. — We are told that we stand 
upon the brink of action. Certain it is that 
at no time since she entered the war has 
Roumania stood to the fight so well prepared 
as now. In retrospect, it is wonderful to 
realise all that has been accomplished despite 
inexperience and shortage of material. The 
word " starvation " makes us smile nowadays, 
for we are almost surfeited by the luxury of 
supplies brought by regular transport systems 
from Russia. Further, the whole undulating 
surroundings of Jassy are cloaked green with 
growing corn. A peaceful surety of general 
well-being envelops us. My little deserted 
garden is pushing up all sorts of flowers whose 
impetus was their own, for they sowed them- 
selves, blown hither by winds from the woods. 
Roses are budding regardless of horticultural 
rules, for wistaria has only just begun to uncurl 
its tendrils and promises no flower. I think 
that it must have got discouraged at finding 
no spring to glorify. We missed that season 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 183 

altogether this year and leapt from winter 
into summer, so I take it that the wistaria is 
sulking now. The dust lies ankle-deep on 
the roads, but somehow it feels quite different 
from the disease-laden powder of autumn. 
So much disinfectant has been strewn just 
lately that the very air brings whiffs of it to 
strengthen the contrast with perfume of 
flowers and herbs. We have been able to 
make a little jam with cherries and goose- 
berries brought from outlying gardens. Also 
some marmalade as a result of a gift of oranges 
from Odessa. I sacrificed at least two future 
winter breakfasts by succumbing to the tempta- 
tion of eating one when they arrived. It was 
the best thing that I ever tasted. 

It seems hard lines on the new Roumanian 
army that their Russian allies should be in 
trouble now, as it is difficult to believe that a 
country like Russia can get under way again 
quickly. The evolution must surely take years. 
It is curious to contrast the present attitude 
of mind in Russia with the one that has 
gradually crept over the Roumanian popula- 
tion. When they first went forth to fight, I 
doubt whether one man out of ten knew the 
real reason of his going. In general their 
enthusiasm was at that time merely for war, 



1 84 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

for the desire to kill had blown over their 
country. But now they have formed their ideal 
of a fight for Peace, and seeing their country 
tortured has made them understand that they 
love the soil and want to make it well. They 
love their English allies, and it has been 
a pleasant discovery to find in them only 
augmentation of loyalty and trust. The army 
is well fed now, and well clothed ; the men 
have had time to rest, to look backwards, 
and to remember where they went wrong. 
They have had a chance to learn which of 
their officers to follow and those amongst 
their comrades who require to be led. One 
has only to watch them march by nowadays 
to mark the difference in their carriage and 
the concerted drumming of their hobnailed 
boots. And they have borrowed cadenced 
songs from the Russians, who sing no longer 
now that they no longer march. 

Needless to say, there is much that still 
remains to be done. The army no longer 
starves for the necessities, such as ammunition 
and sanitary supplies, but it hungers for 
delicacies and details. These will all come, 
in time, I suppose, just as the other and 
more immediate requirements came ; but it 
would be a tragic mistake to launch forth 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 185 

again without them. The Roumanians, luckily, 
realise the danger of such action, and their 
leaders are too clever to stumble into the pit- 
fall of foolhardiness which always lurks for 
those who have lately escaped from danger. 
But the army, as a whole, is straining to take 
the offensive, and it is so wonderful that the 
men should feel thus after all that they have 
suffered that it seems almost cruel to tie their 
hands. English and French officers alike agree 
that a capital fighting force has grown up, no 
one quite knows how, out of the demoralisa- 
tion of the last few months, and it is im- 
possible to give a sufficiency of credit to the 
leaders who have built it up. 

The King has undoubtedly proved himself 
a great man in this war. Few could have 
sunk all personal interest and sympathies 
before pure patriotism of the most altruistic 
kind as he has done, and I think that the 
power of the throne, even in this century of 
socialistic tendencies, makes itself felt here 
now as would have seemed impossible a bare 
two years ago. Be it also remembered that 
he has had to help him a woman who is 
beautiful and brilliant, and who is, besides, 
his Queen. 

It is a disconcerting testimony to the 



1 86 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

pettiness of human nature to be obliged to 
record that now, after all the sufferings that 
we have witnessed and which we, ourselves, 
escaped by just a miracle, the only thing that 
actively disturbs our tranquillity should be a 
plague of flies ! I simply cannot begin to 
describe the extent to which they worry us. 
A few fly-papers saved from amongst our 
original stores from home have saved our 
reason. I bought yards and yards of the 
wedding veiling which peasant women use 
and nailed it outside all the windows, but 
even so, after two or three hours, my papers 
were black. People come and beg most 
piteously for " Just one paper." And when 
I feel generous I give it to them, and 
then wake up in the night and regret 
my action. Now that my stock is low, 
I have invented a substitute of melted resin 
and corrosive sublimate, mixed with a little 
oil to prevent the mixture hardening. How- 
ever, I was only able to obtain two kilos of 
resin, and had to send to Russia for that. 
We had one small resulting tragedy from my 
ingenuity : for a little while we have owned 
two baby jackdaws, who hop about all over 
the house, and one of them stuck to a fly- 
paper. Such a turmoil as rose was never 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 187 

heard before. They are huge little birds, 
very amusing, affectionate and friendly, who 
cannot yet eat alone. They fell out of their 
nest and adopted us, to become our constant 
delight. I never believed that the tale of the 
Jackdaw of Rheims was anything but a fairy 
story before, but I must confess that these 
little beasts steal everything that shines. 

It has been interesting to discover what 
solace can be found in days of the most anxious 
uncertainty by contact with things young and 
care-free. All the English children were sent 
home months ago, and we miss their atmosphere 
so horribly that anything small and happy 
finds welcome here. I have noticed that 
Roumanians who took but the most cursory 
interest in a nursery world before they went 
to war have become almost ostentatiously 
parental lately. The whole aspect of Jassy 
has lost the impression it used to give of 
having been a most ill-chosen picnic site 
where it had very lately and copiously rained. 
We can almost flatter ourselves that we live 
in a nourishing military centre. French blue 
and grey and English khaki almost predomi- 
nate about the streets now that the Russian 
units have moved into scattered canvas cities. 
For it is significant of new and extremely 



1 88 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

salutary military discipline to note that it is 
only the officers who wander except when 
actually off duty. I never could have credited 
the possibility of Roumania boasting a town 
that did not announce itself as primarily built 
for pleasure, yet, nowadays, not even a Bosche 
caserne could look more business-like. It gives 
an overwhelming sense of satisfaction to drive 
past the big buildings lately built for storage, 
and to recall the wastage lying on their sites 
some bare weeks ago. One or two restaurants 
have opened and do a roaring trade, and the 
shops have begun to sport tentative wares in 
their windows. 

Our own house is no longer the " English 
Hotel." We only have as guests those strangers 
we want to see. Because the hotels have 
become more or less normal, and have been 
known to promise a room for a certain date, 
and offer it, all prepared when that date came, 
with linen, hot water and a bed. Local papers 
make their appearance daily on our breakfast- 
tables, and tell the news of the world in the 
same fashion as do their big brothers in 
England — that is to say, they keep us inter- 
ested and teach us just nothing at all. A 
theatre has opened in the centre of the town, 
and our charity matinees have tried to rival 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 189 

the accounts of London. Proportionately 
astonishing was the financial profit. It ap- 
pears that, even in Roumania, there are still 
a few rich men-, Naturally those landowners 
whose property lies in Moldavia have accrued 
to themselves worldly goods which their 
Wallachian brothers lost, and the credit of 
the country is as good as is possible when the 
whole machinery has been disorganised. 

Further, for the first time in history there 
is real understanding between the peasant and 
his landlord — still embryonic, naturally, but 
nevertheless latent and productive of a sympa- 
thetic atmosphere. I have come across hun- 
dreds of cases of unostentatious charity just 
lately, and the Roumanian peasant is a very 
loyal, grateful soul, who, like all of us, finds 
it pleasant to be spoilt. 

Life became so monotonous when passed in 
a continual state of tension which never knew 
the satisfaction of an actual happening to give 
it raison d'etre, that we have become rather 
sociable and have begun to give little dinner 
parties. Luckily we can listen to good music, 
because there is genius in the race, and I have 
garnered many pleasant memories of temporary 
oblivion to the crude realities of life brought 
by cadences which seem, in retrospect, to echo 



190 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 

from a half-forgotten world. Foretaste of a 
peace that shall be lasting comes in the golden 
evenings, which see us motor southwards 
through pine woods and along roads of trans- 
figured dust towards the little villages which 
only a miracle has saved from ruin. Almost 
invariably we find some tunester whose instinct 
has made him wander home, where once, 
before he went to war, his music taught all 
young things to dance. Joie de vivre dies 
hard, and he usually only requires to be found 
before he starts to play. And youth, which 
cannot die, collects and catches rhythm which 
we are not allowed to know, because it lies in 
a future which is not ours. Just to watch, 
however, brings us sufficiency of contentment. 

June 191 7. — I have been wondering whether 
any one would care to read this diary. Rou- 
mania is deserving of notice and appreciation. 
She has proved herself, and in the greatest 
manner which does not savour of ostentation. 
All that has been lately accomplished spells 
silent work and no small devotion to what has 
grown in this our century to be the greatest 
cause. Strangers who had knowledge and 
experience, who came to put machinery in 
motion, remain here, it is true. But they 



A ROUMANIAN DIARY 191 

stay to work, and are no longer required to 
lead. The army trusts its officers, the nation 
appreciates its King. And we outsiders feel 
that we want to go home and tell the family 
of Allies that our little brother Roumania has 
grown into a man of whom we have reason to 
be very proud. 



THE END 



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